Tsundoku Reader

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

Category: Book awards

本屋大賞2020 Japanese Booksellers Award 2020

January 23, 2020 / / 0 Comments

The books nominated for the Booksellers Award were announced this week. Bookstore employees around Japan vote for the books they are most eager to recommend to customers. I used to try and read every book on the list by the time the winner was announced, only to end up disappointed by many of them. After all, there is something for everyone on this list, and even if I don’t get on with every book here, I think that the list is a snapshot of the variety out there in the Japanese literary scene. The winner will be announced on April 7.

砥上裕將『線は、僕を描く』

Hiromasa Togami, “The Lines that Portray Me”

This debut novel won the 59th Mephisto Prize and was initially written as a manga (which can be read here). The main character loses his parents in an accident when he is still in college and is befriended by an ink-wash painter he meets at the gallery where he works. The artist takes him on as an apprentice, but this angers the artist’s granddaughter, who vows to beat him in an art competition. The novel uses ink-wash painting to explore themes of loss and recovery. Reviewers praise the descriptions of this art form (Togami is himself an ink-wash painter), but for some this wasn’t enough to make up for a simplistic plot.

早見和真『店長がバカすぎて』

Kazumasa Hayami, “The Store Manager is Just Too Stupid”

The heroine of this novel works in a bookstore in Kichijoji, where she has to deal with all the problems her idiot manager causes. The only saving grace is her love of books and a co-worker, until one day he suddenly announces he is quitting. Although this sounds light, I will be reading this simply because it’s set in a bookstore (perhaps that explains why it was nominated?) and will serve as a break from some of the heavier books on this list.

川上未映子『夏物語』

Mieko Kawakami, “Summer Story”

Natsuko, a 38 year-old woman born in Osaka and now working as a novelist in Tokyo, begins to realize that she wants to have a child of her own. She begins to look into ways she could have a child without a partner, and encounters people who force her to ask herself whether it is selfish to bring a child into this world. This is a long novel that grapples with the fact that we can’t decide whether to be born ourselves, but can decide whether to have a child.

川越宗一『熱源』

Soichi Kawagoe, “Heat Source”

This book has already received several awards, including the 162nd Naoki Award and the 9th Booksellers’ Historical Novel Award. Set during the Meiji era (1836-1912), it tells the story of Yayomanekuh, an Ainu man born in Sakhalin whose homeland is stolen from him by the Japanese government. After losing his wife and many friends to smallpox and cholera, he takes on a Japanese name, Yasunosuke Yamabe, and resolves to return to Sakhalin. This story is told in parallel with the story of Bronisław Piotr Piłsudski, born in Lithuania but not allowed to speak speak Polish, his mother tongue, due to harsh Russian assimilation policies. He was sentenced to hard labor on Sakhalin for his involvement in a plot to kill the czar, and this is where he meets Yamabe. This novel, based on real events and people, depicts the effects that the Meiji government’s forced “civilization” had on the Ainu.

横山秀夫『ノースライト』

Hideo Yokoyama, “North Light”

In this mystery, an architect discovers that the new house he has designed for a family lies empty, with nothing in it but an old chair and a phone. This is Yokoyama’s first book in six years, since “64” (which has been translated into English as “Six Four” by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies).

青柳碧人『むかしむかしあるところに、死体がありました。』

Aoyagi Aito, “Once Upon a Time, There Was a Corpse”

This book consists of five linked stories in which locked rooms, alibis and deathbed messages are used to retell Japanese folktales like “Urashima Taro,” “Momotaro” and “The Grateful Crane.”

知念実希人『ムゲンのi』（双葉社）

Mikito Chinen, “Infinite i”

Chinen, a practicing doctor, has written another thriller set in a hospital. A young doctor, unable to find a cure for a series of patients who are unable to wake up, consults her grandmother, who is a psychic. Her grandmother tells her that she must try mabuigumi, an Okinawan shamanistic practice in which a shaman calls back spirits that are wandering the world, untethered from the physical body. This is the third straight year that Chinen’s novels have been nominated.

相沢沙呼『medium霊媒探偵城塚翡翠』

Sako Aizawa, “Hisui Jozuka, Psychic Detective”

Shiro Kogetsu, a mystery novelist who has also solved some difficult cases, meets Hisui Jozuka, a medium who can convey the words of the dead. The pair use psychic powers and logic to resolve cases.

小川糸『ライオンのおやつ』

Ito Ogawa, “The Lion’s Snack”

Another author who has been nominated many times for this award, Ogawa tells the story of Shizuku, who is only 33 but has only a short time left to live. She spends her last days at a hospice in the Setouchi islands, where the patients can request a memorable food they want to eat again on Sundays. Unable to choose, Shizuku thinks about what she really wanted to do in her life.

凪良ゆう『流浪の月』

Yu Nagira, “The Roving Moon”

After her father dies and her mother disappears, a young girl is sent to live with her aunt. When her cousin sexually abuses her, she resolves to run away, but is instead rescued by a 19 year-old boy who is also uncertain about his place in the world. The calm life they create for themselves is broken up after two months, and the young man is arrested and sent to a juvenile medical treatment facility. They meet again as adults and form a relationship that goes beyond either love or friendship. This novel questions what is “normal” and what families can look like, and I am particularly interested in reading this one.

 

 

 

Round-up of the 2019 Booksellers Award Nominees

April 8, 2019 / / 5 Comments

Note: A few hours after I published this post, the winner was announced and it was indeed「そして、バトンが渡された」—an overwhelming favorite, with 435 points. The distant second-place winner was 「ひと」, with 297.5 points.

The winner of the 2019 Booksellers Award will be announced at 7pm on April 9 in Japan. I read those nominated books that appealed most to me (I wrote a brief summary of each of the 10 books nominated here). Unlike the Akutagawa and Naoki awards—in fact, most other literary awards—this award is based on the votes of booksellers around the country and is as close as we can get to an award given by ordinary readers (some bookstores even had charts up letting readers vote for their favorite). For that reason, it’s always intriguing to see what is chosen, even if it’s not my favorite.

Source: Hontai.or.jp

I think「そして、バトンが渡された」(And then the baton was passed) by 瀬尾まいこ (Maiko Seo) has a good chance of winning, given the enthusiastic response in newspaper reviews. 本の雑誌 (Book Magazine) listed it as their top pick for the best books of the first half of 2018, and the magazine’s review panel was surprised that it hadn’t even been nominated for the Naoki Prize (having read the winner, 宝島, I am not at all surprised—the two books are on a completely different level). One panel member mentioned that it had been nominated for the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize, but had not won because the judges couldn’t believe that a 17 year-old girl could live with a 37 year-old man without the man become interested in her sexually and thus concluded that the entire novel is unrealistic. The entire panel properly expressed disgust and disbelief at this.

This novel, about a girl who has two mothers and three fathers and thus goes through three different last names by the time she graduates high school, does seem unrealistic, but you just have to suspend disbelief while reading. Yuko’s calm and practical way of looking at her situation makes her—and thus the book—very appealing. The first chapter begins with Yuko trying to think of some concern she can share with her teacher, who is convinced that Yuko, with her complicated family relationships, must have deep anxieties that she should share. Yuko desperately tries to think of something—anything—that will satisfy her teacher, but she can’t because she’s happy. Of course it helps that the reasons behind Yuko’s shifting family relationships have nothing to do with abuse or poverty or a broken foster care system, but Yuko also has, of necessity, adopted a philosophy that allows her to focus on the present without being dragged down by anxiety and sadness. She makes a conscious decision, when she is quite young, that she cannot be stuck in the past. Once separated from a parent, that was it—she had to focus on her current life and the people she is with. I found this quite sad, but her clear-eyed stance on the world is refreshing and the other characters in the book—especially Morimiya, her last father—are very entertaining.

Similar to  「そして、バトンが渡された」,「さざなみのよる」 by 木皿泉 (Night of Ripples by Izumi Kizara) takes what could be an unrelievedly sad story—the book begins with Nasumi as she dies of cancer and then shifts to the people she leaves behind—and tries to make it a little more redemptive by showing how Nasumi has affected people in her life. I loved Nasumi’s no-nonsense attitude toward life and her unwillingness to take shit from anyone, but once Kizara started introducing some magical elements into the story (for example, Nasumi’s spirit somehow makes an elevator repeatedly stop on the fifth floor—gokai in Japanese, which also means mistake or misunderstanding—to show a friend that she is making the wrong decision), she lost me a little. So while I enjoyed reading this novel, I was left wondering if simply “enjoying” a book is enough for it to merit an award.  Perhaps it is in the case of the Booksellers Award? After all, this is an award given to the book that booksellers are most enthusiastic about recommending to customers, so this might skew the results toward a book with wide appeal that goes down easily.

I had been looking forward to「愛なき世界」by 三浦しをん (World without Love by Shion Miura) so much that I pre-ordered it from Japan so that it would ship as soon as it was published, instead of my usual method of adding books to my virtual shopping cart and placing an order every few months to save on shipping costs. I love the way Miura digs deep into professions and vocations we don’t normally think about, and the combination of botany and cooking seemed irresistible. But when it came to it, I lost interest about 100 pages in because I wasn’t in the mood for another story about a group of eccentrics immersed in strange occupations and a young woman so dedicated to her research that she has no time for romantic relationships. It felt a little too similar to her previous novels.

I also gave up on 「ひと」 by 小野寺史宜 (People by Fuminori Onodera) because, while perfectly pleasant, by this point I wanted something with a little bite. I was also sensing a theme among the books nominated this year, and sure enough, here was a book about a young man who has lost everything and yet remains good-natured and even finds a new family of sorts.

「ある男」(A Man) by  平野啓一郎 (Hirano Keiichiro) was what I needed. It made me realize that entertainment is not all that I look for in a book (unless I’m stuck on a plane)—I want writing so good that certain sentences beg to be read again, and something to think about when I can’t be reading. Some readers found 「ある男」to be a little affected, as if Hirano is showing off his knowledge, but I didn’t get that sense at all. It is certainly cerebral (especially compared to the other nominees), and the mystery is just the scaffolding that Hirano uses to build his theme. But the questions Hirano poses are fascinating

When Rie’s husband dies in a logging accident, she contacts his family, even though he had wanted no contact with them. When her husband’s “brother” comes to pay his respects at the family altar, he realizes that the man in the picture there is not his brother at all. Rie asks a lawyer, Akira Kido, to help her unwind this mystery of who her husband had really been. This is a fascinating mystery, especially because the koseki (family registry) system is so interesting, but you will be disappointed if you expect an edge-of-your-seat kind of mystery. Kido is able to identify Rie’s husband in the end only thanks to a series of coincidences and lucky conversations with colleagues—he doesn’t actually do much sleuthing, and for months at a time he seems to let it drop all together. What he does do is think (often with whiskey in hand and jazz on the radio)—about what it means to be a middle-aged man, how to define happiness, how to be a father, how to think of his heritage as a third-generation Korean man in Japan, how to live with the ever-present threat of earthquakes. When I picked up this book, I assumed that “ある男” (a man) refers to the dead man Kido is trying to identify, but I began to think that actually Hirano is referring to Kido.

Kido’s own crisis of identity begins after the earthquake in 2011, when he notices that the media has begun to mention the massacre of Koreans after the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923 and that jingoistic books and hate speech targeting Koreans and Chinese are finding a new audience. As if it weren’t bad enough to know that a fault line runs just below the surface in Tokyo, this threat of physical violence makes Kido feel increasingly vulnerable, and for almost the first time he is forced to grapple with what it means to be third-generation Korean in Japan. If he were stripped of his profession and his Japanese citizenship, and reduced simply to someone else’s perception of him as Korean, would he still recognize himself?

Kido became a lawyer because his father saw it as a profession that would keep him safe and earn him respect, and in fact he finds that his job gives him a chance to express who he is as a person—a source of both pleasure and anxiety. A con man Kido meets claims that Kido is essentially laundering his own identity—whitewashing his background to fit in to Japanese society. And Kido does almost envy his mystery man’s ability to take on a new identity. As he explains to his wife, at first he just felt sorry for this man, but gradually Kido became fascinated by the way he had taken on a new identity, and the search for him had become a form of escapism. In the end, Kido does manage to find equilibrium, but Hirano does such a good job of identifying the fragility of our sense of self that it seems precarious.

There’s a wonderful interview of Hirano on the podcast 人生に文学を (in Japanese) in which, in addition to discussing how writing styles have changed in the past 20 years and his Twitter habit, Hirano describes what it’s like to be older now than his father was when he died and imagining his father bathing him as he bathes his own son.

Updated to note that an English translation of this book will be published as “A Man” in May 2020, translated by Eli K.P. William.

本屋大賞2019 Japanese Booksellers Award 2019

January 23, 2019 / / 4 Comments

Even if I’m not interested in every book nominated, I always look forward to the announcement of the books nominated for the Booksellers Award because they are chosen not by a panel of judges looking for “literary merit” (which of course has its place too), but by bookstore staff, who vote for the books they enjoyed the most and recommend to others. These are the books nominated for the 2019 Booksellers Award, with the winner to be announced on April 9.  

『愛なき世界』三浦しをん

World without Love, by Shion Miura

Miura often chooses a specific, overlooked sector of the world (the logging industry in 「神去なあなあ日常」, dictionary publishing in 「舟を編む」, running in 「風が強く吹いている」), and this book is centered on the botany department of a university. We see the department and its eccentric inhabitants—the professor who looks like an assassin, an elderly professor who adores potatoes, and a researcher dedicated to growing the largest cactus—through the eyes of Fujimaru, a young man working at a restaurant nearby. Luckily he is as unfamiliar with botany, microscopes and strange plants as most of us are, so his wonder at the beauty of a plant seen under the microscope is also ours. This is also a love story, although not one with much chance of success because the object of Fujimaru’s affections is Motomura, a graduate student more interested in the シロイヌナズナ (thale cress) she is studying than anything else. 

『ある男』 平野啓一郎

A Man, Keiichiro Hirano

Hirano, who won the 120th Akutagawa Prize in 1999 for 『日蝕』, has written here about a man who changes koseki (family register) with another man to escape his past, but after he dies in an accident his wife finds out that the name he was going by belonged to another man entirely. The lawyer she hires to unwind this mystery has his own problems as a third-generation Korean man. Readers write that this novel reads almost like reporting, with a heavy dose of philosophizing thrown in as well. (If a mystery based on a character taking on someone else’s identity sounds intriguing, I recommend 火車 by 宮部みゆき (Miyuki Miyabe), translated into English by Arnold Birnbaum as “All She Was Worth”).

『さざなみのよる』 木皿泉

Night of Ripples, by Izumi Kizara

The first of these interlinking short stories is narrated by Nasumi, who is dying of cancer at age 43, and the rest of the stories are narrated by her family and friends, showing how she remains part of their lives in ways both profound and mundane. Through their reminiscences of Nasumi as a child, adolescent and adult, the reader ends up with a full picture of her life.

『そして、バトンは渡された』 瀬尾まいこ

And the baton was passed, by Maiko Seo

Yuko has two mothers and three fathers, and has had to change her family name three times. This makes it sound like a novel about broken families and violent foster homes, but each family loves Yuko in their own way as she is passed like a baton, and this novel explores what makes a family.

『熱帯』 森見登美彦

Tropical Zone, by Tomihiko Morimi

The first half of this novel, which is based on the Arabian Nights, revolves around a book (also called 熱帯) that no one has read to the end, and the second half is a fantasy that takes place within that book (and then a story within that book and so on like nested dolls). Many readers on bookmeter said they had no idea what was happening by the end, and one reader even wondered if maybe Morimi’s book was actually the one that no one could finish!

『ひと』 小野寺史宜

People, by Fuminori Onodera

Kiyosuke loses both of its parents in succession and has to drop out of college. With his meagers savings, he tries to live on his own in Tokyo. Good luck brings him to a deli just when he most needs the help, and he finds a job here as well as people who help him get back on his feet. This sounds like a lighter novel with most of the characters being almost too goodhearted to be true, but there is definitely a time and a place for books like this.

『ひとつむぎの手』 知念実希人

Hands of the soul savior, by Mikito Chinen

Mikito Chinen is a practicing doctor who comes from a family of doctors, but he always wanted to be a writer. His first novel was published in 2012 and he has since written several thrillers set in hospitals. This is no exception. Yusuke, a doctor at a university hospital, is ordered by the hospital director to take on the guidance of three residents with the promise of becoming a cardiac surgeon if they join the department. The director also tasks him with finding out who had sent him an anonymous letter denouncing him.

『火のないところに煙は』 芦沢央

Smoke where there is no fire, by Yo Ashizawa

This is a collection of six horror stories with the connection becoming clear in the last story. They are narrated by a novelist (Ashizawa herself) who is asked to write a ghost story set in Kagurazaka. Although she starts by writing about the experience of a friend, a few months after this first story is published in a literary magazine, she begins hearing from other people about their actual experiences. Ashizawa writes as if these were true stories she is merely reporting.

『フーガはユーガ』 伊坂幸太郎

Fuga is Yuga, by Kotaro Isaka

This SF mystery begins with Yuga talking to a man in a family restaurant in Sendai. He talks about his twin brother Fuga and their childhood, marked by their father’s domestic violence and bullying, but made bearable by their special skill—they can switch places on their birthday, once a year. As adults, they become involved again in an incident from their childhood. It might sound depressing, but in Isaka’s hands it becomes something different. The twins’ names, which sound like “who” and “you,” are just one example of Isaka’s playfulness. 

『ベルリンは晴れているか』 深緑野分

Is it sunny in Berlin? by Nowaki Fukamidori

Nowaki has written a historical mystery set in Germany just after WWII. Seventeen year-old Augusta works in a canteen for US soldiers, but when she learns of the mysterious death of a man who had protected her during the war, she sets out on a search for his nephew to tell him the news. She runs into a good-natured former actor turned thief named Kafka on the road, and they become traveling companions. Augusta’s own story of how she survived the war is told in intervening chapters.

Nominees for the 2018 Japanese Booksellers Award

January 18, 2018 / / 5 Comments

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.

Winners of the 158th Akutagawa Prize and Naoki Prize

January 16, 2018 / / 2 Comments

The 158th Akutagawa Prize and Naoki Prize were announced yesterday in Tokyo. I am always interested in this award, but not always excited to actually read the winning books. This year’s winners—both the authors and the books—seem like a breath of fresh air, and make me excited about where Japanese literature is going, and surely that’s the whole point of literary prizes?

Yoshinobu Kadoi and Chisako Wakatake at the award ceremony Source: NHK

The Akutagawa Prize was awarded jointly to 石井遊佳 (Yuka Ishii) for 「百年泥」 (“Hundred Year Mud”) and 若竹千佐子 (Chisako Wakatake) for 「おらおらでひとりいぐも」 (“I Go As I Go By Myself”).

Yuka Ishii
Source: Shinchosha

Yuka Ishii (54) began writing in college and has continued writing and submitting her novels and stories to new writer competitions ever since. Although she did not have any success until 「百年泥」won the Shincho New Writer’s Award in 2017, in an interview Ishii said that she never grew impatient because she felt that no matter how many times she was reborn, she would always be an author. She (reluctantly) moved to Chennai, India, in 2014 with her husband, who studies Sanskrit, and now teaches Japanese in an IT company. Ishii used her own experiences during the flooding in Chennai in December 2015 in her novel.  The main character of “Hundred Year Mud,” also a Japanese teacher in Chennai, gets caught up in a hundred-year flood that releases mud and a stream of missing people and objects. With elements of magical realism (Ishii is a fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez), the narrator vicariously experiences the past of the various objects dug out of the mud. However, she also intersperses memories of her experiences teaching Japanese and recollections of her mother and ex-husband in this novel, which begins as the narrator starts to cross a bridge and ends as she steps off the bridge.

Chisako Wakatake, who won an award for new writers from a literary journal and now the Akutagawa Prize for her debut novel,「おらおらでひとりいぐも」, is 63 years old, making her the second oldest person to win this award (Natsuko Kuroda won in 2013 at age 75). Wakatake focused on raising her two children and running her home until her husband died when she was 55, at which point she began taking writing classes. The narrator of her novel, Momoko, is a widow in her 70s who misses her husband and is estranged from her children, but also enjoys her new freedom. Written in Tohoku dialect, Momoko talks to herself and those in her past as she looks back at her life and strives to enjoy the time she has left. The title, also in dialect, seems to quote a line in Kenji Miyazawa’s poem, 永訣の朝 (The Morning of Last Farewell), on the death of his sister. (There is more information on Kenji Miyazawa and a translation of this poem by Roger Purvell here.)

This connection to Kenji Miyazawa continues with the winner of the Naoki Prize,「銀河鉄道の父」 (“Father of the Milky Way Railroad”) by 門井慶喜  (Yoshinobu Kadoi). Kadoi writes historical novels and mysteries, and has been nominated for the Naoki Prize three times. His novel tells the story of Kenji Miyazawa, one of Japan’s greatest writers, from the perspective of his father, who could not understand why Kenji did not want to take over the family pawn shop and was mystified by his passion for writing, but supported him anyway. The novel also depicts Kenji’s struggles to become independent economically and emotionally.

These selections—a novel by a woman who kept writing until she finally found acclaim at age 54, a novel by a woman who didn’t even begin writing until age 55, and a novel about the life of one of Japan’s best-loved author—show that writing and books have a strong pull in Japan.

Japanese Booksellers Award 2017

January 29, 2017 / / 2 Comments

The 10 books nominated for the 2017 Booksellers Award were announced on January 18, and I have to admit I was repeatedly refreshing the website around the time the official announcement was due. I was not disappointed by their selections (and the gorgeous book covers of many selections are also impressive). The winner will be announced on April 11. (If you are curious, I wrote about last year’s nominees and the winner here and here.)

『i』、西加奈子（著）、ポプラ社

i, by Kanako Nishi, published by Poplar Publishing, 2016

Kanako Nishi was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1977 and was raised in Osaka and Cairo, earning a law degree at Kansai University, a background that she uses in her novels. i is her first novel since “Saraba!” (Farewell), which won the 152nd Naoki prize in 2015. It follows the life of Ai from her birth in Syria in 1988 until she is 26 years old. She is adopted by a couple in America, and lives in New York until elementary school, when she moves to Japan. The novel begins with an assertion by the professor of her theoretical math class that “i does not exist in this world.” He is speaking of the imaginary number “i,” but of course it is also the protagonist’s name, refers to the “I” denoting our personal identity, and means “love” in Japanese. This neatly sums up the running theme in this book of Ai’s search for the value of her own existence. She tracks the number of deaths in disasters like the Tohoku earthquake, terrorist attacks like the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the outbreak of the Ebola virus and wars in the Middle East, and searches for reasons that can explain why she has escaped such disasters.

『暗幕のゲルニカ』、原田マハ（著）、新潮社

Guernica Undercover, by Maha Harada, Shinchosha Publishing, 2016

Maha Harada studied art at university and made this her first career, even working at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She published her first novel in 2006, and often weaves art history into her novels. In Guernica Undercover, the tapestry copy of Picasso’s Guernica, displayed on the wall of the United Nations Building in New York City, disappears one day in 2003. The story moves between Paris before the war, current-day New York, and Spain in a thrilling art novel, a genre that Harada seems to have created singlehandedly.

『桜風堂ものがたり』、村山早紀（著）、PHP研究所

The Story of Ofudo, by Saki Murayama, PHP Institute, Inc., 2016

Issei Tsukihara worked in a bookshop located in a department store and gained a reputation for finding treasures among the stacks of books. However, he takes responsibility for a shoplifting incident and has to quit his job. Hurt and at a loss, Issei travels to meet an elderly man he had met on the Internet, who is struggling to run a bookstore in a rundown village. I can easily understand why booksellers would nominate this book for the Booksellers Prize!

『コーヒーが冷めないうちに』、川口俊和（著）、サンマーク出版

Before the Coffee Cools, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Sunmark Publishing, 2016

This book is about a seat in a coffee shop called Funiculi Funicula that can bring you back to the past. You would think this would attract a steady stream of customers to the coffee shop, but it is usually almost empty because several annoying rules ruin its appeal, including the limitation that you can only go back and visit people who have been to the coffee shop before; you can’t change the present, no matter what; and your time in the past starts when your coffee is poured and ends once the coffee has gone cold. The book cover promises “heart-warming miracles” in this story, which would normally have made me lose all interest in reading this book. However, since it has been nominated I’m giving it a chance, and halfway into the book, I think Kawaguchi’s punchy sense of humor redeems it from the status of Hallmark greeting card sentiment. [Edited to add that I have now finished this book and am sad to report that, while I initially enjoyed it as something light to read while I brushed my teeth, it quickly descended into bathos, with obvious attempts to manipulate readers’ emotions and make us cry.]

『コンビニ人間』、村田沙耶香（著）、文藝春秋

Convenience Store People, by Sayaka Murata, Bungeishunju, 2016

I wrote about this book, which won the 155th Akutagawa Prize, in detail here. This short novel is about Keiko, a young woman who has worked at a convenient store for 18 years and finds comfort in the routine this job offers. She has never understood how to act like everyone else, but the manuals spelling out every movement in a convenient store are a lifesaver for her. The turning point comes when Shiraha, an abhorrent misogynist, begins working at the convenient store. Keiko’s unusual perspective allows us to feel sympathy even for him, and highlights the strange ways in which identity is constructed and we become constricted within them.

『ツバキ文具店』、小川糸（著）、幻冬舎

Tsubaki Stationery Store, by Ito Ogawa, Gentosha, 2016

The main character, Hatoko (named after the hato, or doves, that flock to the famous Shinto shrine Tsurugaoka Hachimangu), is only in her 20s but has now succeeded her grandmother to become the 11th in a long line of scribes. She lives in the old family house that does double-duty as a stationery store, where she writes new year’s cards, love letters, letters breaking off relationships, and anything else her customers request. This is a quiet book that clearly conveys Ogawa’s love for Kamakura, where she lives. The book starts with a description of how Hatoko spends her mornings, sweeping in front of the store and carefully polishing the house’s floors while the water for her tea comes to a boil. After taking a break with a cup of bancha, she puts fresh water by the stone marking the grave in which old letters are buried. This slow pace continues throughout the book, which is broken up into a section for each season. (I have reviewed it in more detail here.)

『罪の声』、塩田武士（著）、講談社

The Voice of the Crime, by Takeshi Shiota, Kodansha, 2016

This novel is a fictional attempt to solve the Glico Morinaga case, an extortion case targeting the major candy companies Glico and Morinaga that was never solved. In 1984, Katsuhisa Ezaki, the president of Glico, was kidnapped, and a ransom demand was made. Ezaki managed to escape, but company property was set on fire and someone calling himself “The Monster with 21 Faces” began sending letters claiming that Glico candy had been poisoned. The extortion efforts subsequently targeted Morinaga and Fujiya, and only ended with the suicide of the Shiga Prefecture police superintendent, apparently worn down by harassing letters from the Monster with 21 Faces and shame at his failure to find the culprit.

This novel begins 31 years after the incident as a newspaper reporter tries to find the criminal. At the same time, a man realizes that the voice of the person demanding the ransom was his own voice as a child and also tries to solve the crime. The police ended up conjecturing that yakuza groups were involved, so I’m curious to see how Takeshi Shiota solves this puzzle, which  would be familiar to an entire generation growing up at the end of the Showa era.

『みかづき』、森絵都（著）、集英社

Crescent Moon, by Eto Mori, Shueisha, 2016

This novel starts in 1963 and covers the evolution of juku, a private school offering tutoring after regular school hours, through the story of Goro and Chiaki and their children. Although he does not have a teaching certificate, Goro offers supplementary education in an elementary school. Chiaki recognizes his talent for teaching and convinces him to start a juku with her in a rented house in Chiba. During WWII, Chiaki saw how public education was harnessed to the ends of the state in teaching children patriotism, and this sends her searching for alternatives. With the baby boom and Japan’s economic growth in the background, Chiaki and Goro look for the “ideal” form of education while their children question whether such a thing even exists.

『蜜蜂と遠雷』、恩田陸（著）、幻冬舎

Honeybees and Distant Thunder, by Riku Onda, Gentosha, 2016

This book won the 156th Naoki Prize this month, so it has already become a bestseller in Japan. The story follows four musicians as they compete in an international piano competition, but also brings in the voices of the judges, piano tuners and reporters. The publisher even has a playlist of all the pieces mentioned and planned in the book.

『夜行』、森見登美彦（著）、小学館

Night Travels, by Tomihiko Morimi, Shogakukan, 2016

This fantasy novel incorporates elements of science fiction and horror in a linked series of five stories. The narrator and his five friends met during school days in college. Ten years earlier, when they had all gone to the Kuruma Fire Festival, Hasegawa had suddenly disappeared from amongst them, and now the remaining five have gathered again in Kuruma in the hopes that they will meet her again. As the night deepens, they talk about the strange experiences they had had as they travelled to Kuruma. Morimi said that he chose to set this story in Kyoto because it has so many side streets that would not draw a second glance during the day but become strange and mysterious in the dark of night, which stimulates the imagination.

 

Winner of Japanese Booksellers Award

August 25, 2016 / / 1 Comment

羊と鋼の森

宮下奈都

文藝春秋、2015

A Forest of Sheep and Steel

Natsu Miyashita

Bungeishunju, 2015 [no English translation available]

 

The Japanese Booksellers Award is one of the only prizes that I follow closely because both the short list and the winning book are chosen by bookstore staff, who nominate the books they enjoyed the most and recommend to others. This method seems to ensure the selection of books that offer readability and sheer enjoyment. 羊と鋼の森 (A Forest of Sheep and Steel) was no exception. Natsu Miyashita’s story of Tomura’s all-consuming ambition to become a piano tuner was beautifully written, with a languid pace that matched the story’s tone.

The novel starts with a refrain that runs throughout Tomura’s story:

He could smell the forest, the way it smells in the fall when night is near. The trees are swaying in the wind, and the leaves are rustling. That smell of the forest as night is closing in…

But Tomura is not anywhere near a forest—he is standing in his high school gymnasium, watching a piano tuner, Soichiro Itadori, work on the school piano. Age 17, Tomura (whose name is written as 外村, the characters for “outside” and “village”) is from a mountain village whose school does not go beyond junior high, so he had to leave home to attend high school. Lacking much ambition, he is simply biding time until he can graduate.

Hearing Itadori as he worked on the piano changed all that. Itadori, perhaps bemused by the spellbound boy, tells him that this piano produces beautiful sound because it comes from the mountains and fields–sheep ate the grass on the mountains and in the meadows, producing the wool that was made into felt for the hammers. Itadori demonstrates the way the hammer, encased in felt, hits the steel strings, and again Tomura hears the sound of the forest in early autumn, just as the light dims.

Although he’d never even been aware of the existence of pianos until then, Tomura cannot forget the sounds he has heard and seeks out Itadori to ask to be his apprentice. Instead, Itadori gives him the name of a school that trains piano tuners.

Tomura spends two years at a school on Honshu, with just seven students in his year. From the start, he is overwhelmed by the difficulty of his chosen profession. He feels as if he has braved the forest that he had always been warned against entering as a child, told that once he loses his way, he will never find his way out.

This picture of Kamishikimi Kumanoimaso Shrine in Takamori, Kumamoto Prefecture, is how I imagined the forest Tomura refers to.

This picture of Kamishikimi Kumanoimaso Shrine in Takamori, Kumamoto Prefecture, is how I imagined the forest Tomura refers to.

After graduating, Tomura gets a job at Itadori’s studio, but still believes that mastering the craft of piano tuning and achieving the sound Itadori is able to produce is beyond him. He stays late every night practicing tuning on the studio’s pianos. He also begins to listen to classical music for the first time, and falls asleep listening to Mozart or Beethoven or Chopin.

Much of the novel revolves around Tomura’s misgivings as to his own abilities and conversations with his colleagues debating the role of a piano tuner. This is not a book filled with dramatic plot twists. Welcome diversions from Tomura’s self-doubt, which can seem rather tortured after a while, come from the other piano tuners he works with, whose back stories we learn, and his friendship with twins Kazune and Yuni. These two gifted piano players and their different styles of performing are pivotal in helping Tomura find his own approach to piano tuning.

I admit I got a bit tired of the use of the forest as metaphor, but Miyashita’s descriptions of Tomura’s growing awareness of the beauty around him were lovely. When he has a free moment, Tomura opens the lid of the piano and gazes inside at the 88 piano keys and the strings attached to each one. The strings stretched out straight and the hammers lying ready to strike look like an orderly forest to him. He sees beauty here, something that had just been an intellectual concept to him before.

His eyes and ears were first opened by the piano, but now that his senses have been awakened, he dips back into his memory for more beauty:

For example, the milk tea his grandmother would make when he was home. Adding milk to the small saucepan in which she steeped the tea turned it the color of a muddy river after heavy rains. He could almost imagine fish lying hidden at the bottom of the pan in his hot tea. He would gaze, mesmerized, at the liquid swirling into his cup. Yes, that was beauty.

When Tomura goes home after his grandmother dies, he walks in the forest. He hears spruce needles falling to the ground, a sound with no corollary on the musical scale. And then it all came together:

I knew it all along! I get it. I felt like yelling out loud. I recognized that sound the spruce makes. Is that why [the sound of the piano] made me nostalgic? Is that why it drew me in? I had known the archetypal sound of the piano all along. The first instrument probably originated in the forest.

However, there were times when Tomura’s world was so far from the banal everyday tasks of washing clothes and cooking meals that it seemed too rarefied. This was exacerbated when, on the day I had set aside a few hours to write about this book, my refrigerator’s control panel gave out and the washing machine began leaking water onto the floor. As I cleared out the refrigerator and mopped up stagnant water, I have to admit that Tomura’s single-minded pursuit of the perfect pitch almost irritated me.

However, reading the comments on bookmeter, a Japanese site where readers record the books they’ve read and post comments and reviews (http://bookmeter.com/b/4163902945), I was struck by how many readers loved this book precisely because it took them away from their workday and daily stress. There might be no mention of cooking meals, paying bills or washing up in A Forest of Sheep and Steel, but we can always turn to Haruki Murakami for such quotidian details (his descriptions of bread-making and pasta were a high point of A Wild Sheep Chase for me). Miyashita’s novel serves another purpose, perhaps as a reminder that a protective layer of abstract thought or an all-aborbing interest just might prevent us from allowing our minds to become numbed by banalities. Whether that means that we are puzzling over the geometry of fractals, going over the steps of a perfect judo throw, or marveling at the intricacy of Schubert’s quintets as we scrub dishes and sit in traffic, surely we need more of it as a refuge against the mundane. So here’s hoping that we can all be a little bit more like Tomura.

*Although A Forest of Sheep and Steel has not been translated into English, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: The Hidden World of a Paris Atelier by T.E. Carhart might be a good substitute. Here is a review by one of my favorite bloggers and also a standard newspaper review.

 

Japanese Booksellers Award 2016

February 13, 2016 / / 5 Comments

A glance at the list of nominees for this year’s 本屋賞, or Booksellers Award, provides an interesting counterpoint to the books translated from Japanese to English, a disproportionate percentage of which seem to be mysteries (with many of the blurbs claiming that here is the next Stieg Larsonn).

The Booksellers Award is a fairly young prize, launched in 2004. Booksellers and bookstore staff nominate three books that they would recommend, with a list of nominees compiled from the results. Booksellers must read all ten of the nominated books to vote in the next round. Looking through lists of nominees from past years is one of the ways I choose what to read next, and I’ve yet to be disappointed.

You can read more about the prize and descriptions of the past winners (in English) here. The winner of this year’s award will be announced on April 12, 2016.

Books Nominated for the 2016 Booksellers Award

[None of these books have been translated into English yet.]

『朝が来る』Morning Will Come
辻村深月 Mizuki Tsujimura
文藝春秋 Bungeishunju

A couple raising their child suddenly get a phone call from that child’s biological mother, saying that she wants her child back. This is described as a mystery with social themes, dealing with motherhood and what it means to be a family.

『王とサーカス』King and Circus
米澤穂信 Honobu Yonezawa
東京創元社 Tokyo Sogensha

A former journalist, now working for a travel magazine, is visiting Nepal when the royal family is massacred in 2001 (a true event). She begins reporting on the event, and comes across a body with the word “informer” cut into the skin.

『君の膵臓をたべたい』”I Want to Eat Your Pancreas”
住野よる Yoru Sumino
双葉社 Futabasha

A boy finds a diary written by his classmate, who it turns out is suffering from a fatal disease of the pancreas and doesn’t have long to live.

『教団Ｘ』Cult X
中村文則 Fuminori Nakamura

集英社 Shueisha

In this story of cults, madness and global terrorism, the main character tries to find his girlfriend, only to discover that she belongs to a cult. In the process of his investigation, he is abducted and ordered to spy on another religious group. Meanwhile, the cult is planning an attack…

『世界の果てのこどもたち』The Children from the Other Side of the World
中脇初枝 Hatsue Nakawaki 
講談社 Kodansha

This novel tells the story of three little girls who meet in Manchuria during WWII and become close friends. Their lives take very different paths after the war, with one orphaned during China’s civil war, the Korean girl experiencing prejudice in Japan, and the third losing her family in air raids in Yokohama.

『戦場のコックたち』Battlefield Cooks
深緑野分 Nowaki Fukamidori
東京創元社 Tokyo Sogensha

Set during WWII, this is a series of linked stories about Tim, Ed and Diego, cooks in the military who also solve everyday mysteries, such as who stole 600 boxes of powdered eggs.

『永い言い訳』The Long Excuse
西川美和 Miwa Nishikawa
文藝春秋 Bungeishunju

This novel covers a year in the life of a successful author following the death of his wife in an accident, together with her friend. He copes with his guilt and his grief by helping the bereaved husband of his wife’s friend raise his children, with mixed results.

『羊と鋼の森』Forest of Sheep and Steel 
宮下奈都 Natsu Miyashita
文藝春秋 Bungeishunju

This is a coming-of-age story about a young man so fascinated by the piano that he trains to be a piano tuner. He learns as much from the customers as he does from his teachers.

『火花』 Sparks
又吉直樹 Naoki Matayoshi
文藝春秋 Bungeishunju

This novel tracks the careers of two struggling comedians, one of whom eventually gives up and gets a day job. However, he continues to follow his friend, whose absolute dedication to his craft leads him into a downward spiral. The author is himself a comedian, and won the 153rd Akutagawa Prize for this novel.

『流』  Flow
東山彰良 Akira Higashiyama
講談社 Kodansha

This novel, which won the 153rd Naoki Prize last year, is a coming-of-age story based on the author’s grandfather’s experiences during the Communist uprising in mainland China. The author was born in Taiwan and came to Japan when he was five, and he explores that search for a sense of identity in his writing.

 

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© 2016 Erika Tsugawa All rights reserved. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

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