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

Tag: Ito Ogawa

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.

Breath of Words

August 4, 2017 / / 4 Comments

ツバキ文具店、小川糸、幻冬舎、2016

Tsubaki Stationery Store, by Ito Ogawa, Gentosha, 2016

Hatoko lives in a traditional Japanese house in Kamakura that does double-duty as a stationery store (the Tsubaki Bunguten of the title). She was raised by her grandmother in this house, but escaped her high expectations and rigidity as soon as she could. When the novel begins, Hatoko has returned from several years living abroad to take over the family business after her grandmother’s death, which includes work as a scribe in addition to running the stationery store.

Hatoko’s grandmother had taught her how to write using ink and brush as soon as she was old enough to hold the brush, starting her off with circles, zigzags and helixes. When other children were playing after school, Hatoko was at home learning calligraphy under her grandmother’s strict tutelage.

Ito Ogawa, the author, working at her home in Kamakura Source: Croissant magazine

Hatoko writes a letter pretending to be the deceased husband of a woman with dementia who still waits for his letters; she captures his handwriting perfectly.

Although writing letters for other people had seemed deceitful when she was younger, Hatoko gradually realizes that scribes are essentially writing letters for people who cannot express their feelings in words themselves—her grandmother described it as being a 影武者 (kagemusha), a body double or someone working behind the scenes.

Now she writes goodbye letters, letters encouraging people unable to find jobs, apologies for disgraceful behavior when drunk—words that are hard to say face to face. Over the course of this book, she writes a letter announcing a divorce that also manages to convey the couple’s happiness over 15 years of marriage, a condolence letter after the death of a friend’s monkey, a letter refusing to loan money, a birthday card to the mother-in-law of a woman with horrible handwriting, and a letter to a woman with dementia purporting to be from her long-dead husband.

A letter Hatoko writes for a man refusing to loan money; the handwriting captures his brash personality

Hatoko tries to convey a person’s personality in the letters she writes, using handwriting that fits them. She is scrupulous about every last detail of writing letters, choosing the perfect ink, paper and stamp. When writing a letter to break off a relationship between two friends that has become poisonous, she searches for paper that can’t be easily torn and settles on parchment. For the letter announcing the break-up of a 15-year marriage, she finds a stamp issued the year the couple were married.

Hatoko lives her life at a deliberate, slow pace that belies her young age. In the morning, she dresses and washes before putting water on for tea. While she waits for the water to boil, she sweeps the floors and wipes them down with a damp cloth. And while her tea steeps, she polishes the floors. After drinking her tea, she puts fresh water by the 文塚 (fumizuka), a burial mound where poems and other manuscripts are buried to memorialize or commemorate them.

The fumizuka Hatoko cares for commemorates letters. From the third day of the new year, mail begins to pour in from all over Japan and even overseas from people who can’t bear to throw away letters themselves. Many of these letters are love letters that the recipients are unable to give up until just before they marry someone else. Some people even send all the letters they receive over the course of the year. On February 3, according to the lunar calendar, she burns the letters and preserves the ashes. This aligns with her family’s belief that letters are essentially an offshoot of the writer, the words infused with their breath. (Lest this sound too solemn an occasion, I should mention that a friend joined her for this winter bonfire and they roasted potatoes, Camembert cheese, rice balls and French bread in the embers.)

The book is divided into the four seasons, and as the reader moves from summer to spring, Hatoko seems to be taking on the mantle of scribe and the traditions of her home. I could say that she is “coming to terms with” a childhood lacking in affection, but this phrase is too trite after overuse in misery lit and doesn’t convey the quiet of this novel. There is none of the navel-gazing that I often find in contemporary American novels. Her conflicts (even that word seems overblown) lie below the surface, revealed briefly when, for example, an old friend brings her a bag of the seven spring herbs used to make rice porridge on January 7. Growing up, Hatoko’s grandmother always soaked these plants overnight on January 6 and made Hatoko dip her nails in the water the next morning before cutting them for the first time in the new year in the belief that this would prevent colds all year. She realises that she hasn’t observed this custom since her rebellious period as a teenager, but now that she’s back she gradually returns to many of these traditions.

Hatoko finally finds her own handwriting in this letter she writes to a little girl who lives next door.

As a scribe, Hatoko is very skilled at imitating other people’s handwriting and writing in a script suited to the letter’s subject, and yet she doesn’t know what her own handwriting might look like. She had never written a letter to her grandmother nor received a letter from her. Her grandmother did have a writing style all her own, however, and that’s why Hatoko has never taken down the scrap of paper hanging in the kitchen on which her grandmother had written a proverb: Eat food to match the seasons—bitter foods in the spring, vinegary foods in the summer, pungent and spicy foods in the autumn, and oily and fatty foods in the winter. At the end of the book (and I don’t think this gives anything away—after all, as with any good book, the end is not the point), Hatoko takes down the yellowed paper and rewrites it in her own handwriting, for herself.

I was initially drawn to this book because it was about a stationery store, which is almost as good a setting as a coffee shop or bookstore (at the moment I’m reading a book set in a shop that makes onigiri, or rice balls). If anyone else loves Japanese stationery, you might be interested in this news story about a stationery store that only opens at night called Punpukudo (the article is only in Japanese but the pictures are worth a look). The store, opened by a woman who has loved collecting pencils with different designs since she was little, is open only 5-10pm on weekdays.

Punpukudo, a stationery store in Ichikawa, Chiba prefecture
Source: Asahi Shimbun

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.

 

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

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