Dust and Spores

Spring Snow / Yukio Mishima
Haru no yuki. English
New York : Vintage International, 1990
Translated by Michael Gallagher
The Sea of Fertility, bk. 1
Originally published: 1968
389 p.

Spring Snow is set in Tokyo in 1912, when the hermetic world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders -- rich provincial families unburdened by tradition, whose money and vitality make them formidable contenders for social and political power.

I read this in November on a plane in about 3 hours. Generally three hours on a plane is a forgotten blip in the grand scheme of a person's life (barring thunderstorm or underwear bomb), but Spring Snow is one of those books that makes the time you spend reading it incredibly memorable.

This is the first book in the Sea of Fertility tetrology, and each one features a character so passionately driven by one thing that it ends up killing him. In Spring Snow, this character is Kiyoaki, and he is driven to death by his love for his childhood companion Satoko. This isn't, however, a gushing love story. It's told with Mishima's characteristic elegance and delicately pieced together with themes of dreams, reincarnation, Buddhism, and family.

The books in this set also paint a portrait of Japan over the first half of the 20th Century, when the country underwent major changes. The first novel takes place around 1912 at the end of the Meiji period. The nobility that holds power through rank and tradition is facing an unpredictable future, and this plays a role in the events of the story.

I'm not loving how this review is turning out, so I'm going to wrap it up... but I really do love this book. I should say that a little bit of knowledge of novels contemporary to this one or a sense of the major points of modern Japanese history is really helpful in enjoying this book, but if you're a fan of the art and history of modern Japan, this is definitely something you need to read.

The Summer of the Ubume / Natsuhiko Kyogoku
Ubume no natsu. English
New York : Vertical, 2009
Originally published: 1994
Translated by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander
320 p.

A bizarre set of mysteries have befallen the Kuonji household. Kyoko Kuonji is said to be with child for the last twenty months, and her husband Makio disappeared a few months prior to her pregnancy. The odd circumstances have left the family with no one to turn to for help, until a freelance writer asks his exorcist friends to take on the case. The catch -- the exorcist does not believe in ghosts. To Akihiko "Kyogokudo" Chuzenji, the supernatural is as much metaphysical and mental as it is unearthly.

Initially, I picked up this book because it was a Japanese book marked "Mystery/Horror" on the back, so I thought it'd be a cool ghost story with Japanese spirits. And it was to some extent, but not at all the way I expected. There are a lot of good things to say about the novel, but it also has its faults and a certain first-novel roughness.

According to the text before the novel begins, in Japanese folklore when a pregnant woman dies before giving birth, it might give rise to an ubume, the spirit of a woman drenched in blood from the waist down trying to find someone to take her baby. I'd never heard of this before, but it has a lot of great story potential. Then the novel started, and it was about a man who spends lots of time with a sort of friend/mentor/eccentric and their involvement with the case of a man who disappeared from a locked room and the wife he left behind who is said to be 20 months pregnant and unable to give birth.

The eccentric man I mentioned is the driving force of the plot. He is the one who knows about spirits, psychology, and pretty much anything you could want to know, and he pieces together all the clues and solves the mysteries in very long passages of exposition. This book is very talky, and the conversations mostly consist of this character fielding opinions from other characters and telling them why he's right and they're wrong.

That's where this book kind of falters. The character is very obviously spouting the philosophy of the author, like the author had a lot of ideas he wanted to express, so he built a sort of skeleton story around them and used it to illustrate his points. But he makes no bones about it: the author's name is Kyogoku, and the charater who acts as his voice is named Kyogokudo.

But the mystery is definitely intriguing, especially because the opinions of Kyogokudo are so complex and seemingly contradictory. He talks of spirits and works as an exorcist, but he doesn't believe in ghosts. BUT he'll concede that ghosts and curses exist as far as other people believe in them. It's very confusing at first, and the theory he lays out has many holes, but the contradictions work because they leave the reader wondering the whole time whether the story will end with the mundane or the fantastic coming out ahead. The very flaws in the author's worldview give the book a lot of drive, which I don't think was intended.

Either way, since it's a mystery, I can't say much more about the plot. Some parts of the conclusion are extremely far-fetched, but it still makes for interesting reading. If you can suspend your disbelief and prepare yourself for a bit of talky psychological prosthelytizing, you'll probably find this book intriguing. If anything, the authors extensive knowledge of Japanese folklore is impressive, and you'll learn some neat things along the way.

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things / Lafcadio Hearn
Boston : Tuttle, 2005
Originally published: 1904
xv, 240 p.

In this collection of unforgettably haunting stories, Hearn brings together "the meeting of three ways" -- the austere dreams of India, the subtle beauty of Japan, and the relentless science of the Western world.

Ok I read this like a month ago, so bear with me through a sort of hazy recollection. These aren't the sort of stories that stick out in your memory because of excessive strangeness or creepiness. These also aren't the sort of strange or creepy stories you'd expect to find in a collection that advertises itself as such. The "ghosts" in these ghosts stories are not always spirits of the departed, but nature spirits, memories, or demons of Japanese folklore.

The stories vary in length and level of engagement. Some, like "Mujina", are a little "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" for my taste. In Mujina -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- a guy sees a scary demon woman on the road. He runs away and then he sees a scary demon man. The end. It doesn't really do much.

Other stories, however, bear themes of tradition, trust, revenge, and loss that make them much more powerful and give them that ineffable "Japanese" quality. "The Story of Mimi-nashi Hōichi" is about a blind biwa player summoned by spirits to sing the passage from Tale of the Heike regarding their emperor's downfall. Like ghosts from many cultures, these spirits were mourning the loss of the past, but not in a selfish or vengeful way. When a priest who follows the biwa player on the second night of his recitation realizes he is in the spirits' thrall, he aims to protect the man by painting him with symbols to ward off the spirits. He neglects to write on the man's ears, however, and so they are the only part the spirits can find, so they rip them off to bring them to the emperor. (Don't ask me why; when I'm a Japanese samurai ghost maybe I'll be able to explain it.) Anyway, the suffering of the biwa player in this story comes from the priest's distrust and negligence. Maybe it's because I've read The Tale of the Heike, but the sympathetic characters in this story other than the biwa player are the departed spirits.

My other favorite story in the collection is about a yuki-onna, a snow spirit woman, who spares the life of a beautiful young man after killing his companion on a snowy night. She swears him to secrecy on pain of death and disappears. Years later, the man marries a familiar-looking young woman, they have babies and live happily, but one day he can keep her resemblance out of his mind, so he begins to tell his wife the story of his encounter with the yuki-onna. Wonders behold, his wife IS the yuki-onna, and now she's pissed he broke his promise. She says she can't kill him because he is raising her children, but she melts into a puddle and disappears from his life forever.

The stories are folktales, which is a genre in which we expect to find fantastic creatures and events. That's why it feels awkward to call them "stories and studies of strange things". But the title is a holdover from the Victorian era when this was originally published, and back then, the entire culture of East Asia was strange and fantastical. These stories and the spirits and creatures they describe have a much less alien feel than I imagine they had a century ago.

Oh, I forgot, following the stories, the edition also contains some essays Hearn wrote on bugs: butterflies, mosquitos, and ants. He talks about their role in Japanese culture and literature. I read part of the butterfly one and got bored. So... whatever.

Norwegian Wood / Haruki Murakami
Noruwei no mori. English
New York : Vintage International, 2000
Originally published: 1987
Translated by Jay Rubin
296 p.

I was thirty-seven then, strepped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport. Cold November rains drenched the earth and lent everything the gloomy air of a Flemish landscape: the ground crew in rain gear, a flag atop a squat airport building, a BMW billboard. So -- Germany again.

This is the story of a boy, Toru, and a girl, Naoko, who share a love colored by the tragedy of death. Kizuki, Naoko's boyfriend and Toru's best friend committed suicide at 17, an event from which Naoko never fully recovered.

As Naoko regresses more and more into her mind at a mental health facility, Toru becomes involved with the outgoing and liberated Midori. Norwegian Wood is the story of his relationships with the two young women told from Toru's perspective as a man in his 30's reminiscing about his college years.

This is a departure from Murakami's usual surrealist style, and many judge it as an exercise or experiment, but I think that promotes a reading that misplaces the strength of the work. It's a lovely and moving book, but I think some of the praise it garners is for the wrong things, taking the focus away from the books true beauty.

The story is framed as a reminiscence, and looking to the past with varying degrees of lucidity is a theme throughout, but I don't get the sense that this is really being narrated by an older man looking back with a supposedly hazy memory. After the beginning of the book, grown-up Toru seems forgotten, and the amount of detail in the novel is typical. Entire conversations and meals are recalled like any other novel not from any particular perspective.

There also seems to be some significance placed on the novel's setting in the 1960's, but this seems to be accomplished more through popular culture name-dropping than a truly atmospheric immersion. The story could easily be taking place in the present. I couldn't help but compare it to Ryu Murakami's novel 69, which paints a much clearer picture of 1960's Japan.

Though presented as a love story, Norwegian Wood is much more a coming-of-age novel. The feelings Toru has for Naoko and Midori are conflicting and move him to ultimately discover himself rather than ultimate happiness. The back of the book calls his love for Naoko "heroic" but I find it the opposite. Toru is lonely and even desperate at times, and though he cares very much for Naoko, it lacks the unique selflessness that I associate with "heroic" love.

What I found most fascinating about the character was his tendency to get wrapped up in the world of whoever he was with. Alone, he is weak and makes nearly no decisions of his own. He gets sucked up in his friend Nagasawa's world of sexual conquest, Midori pulls him along at her whim, and when he's dealing with Naoko, he becomes introspective and trapped in his mind like she is. When he is alone, he is empty, and that is why I believe his character feels so lonely even when surrounded by people who love him.

It is here that the strength and poignancy of the novel lie. The perspective, the time period, and the setting all are secondary to the intense struggle of youth to make connections, find themselves psychologically and sexually through the lens of their relationships, and to ultimately take what they find in themselves and share it. It's not unique to any time, but is a story that's universal.

Thousand Cranes / Yasunari Kawabata
Sembazuru. English
New York : Vintage International, 1996
Originally published: 1952
Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker
vi, 147 p.

With a restraint that barely conceals the ferocity of his characters' passions, one of Japan's great postwar novelists tells a luminous story of desire, regret, and the almost sensual nostalgia that binds the living to the dead.

Like Kawabata's other novels, Thousand Cranes is a simple story delicately told through highly self-examining characters. Kikuji, after losing his father, attends a tea ceremony hosted by his father's former mistress, Chikako. She intends to set him up with a young girl with a handkerchief with a thousand cranes on it, but he instead becomes involved with Mrs. Ota, his father's mistress for whom he left Chikako. Their affair brings her shame, for which she commits suicide, and he comes to transfer his feelings to Fumiko, Mrs. Ota's daughter.

I just checked Wikipedia, and my summary is almost identical to theirs, but I swear I didn't copy it. It's just... that's all there is to say about the plot.

It's a lovely, quiet novel, though I'm fairly certain I didn't completely grasp it. Lots of it resonated, especially the themes of loss, grief, and regret. My favorite aspect of the novel was how Kawabata uses objects as vessels for memory with tea bowls and utensils carrying an ownership history that comes alive through interaction with the object, especially the difference between interaction in a tea ritual vs. using the object for non-traditional purposes. The objects and their treatment speak louder than the people often do.

And yet, there was something in the novel that didn't exactly strike me properly. It is most likely the cultural divide, but I didn't always understand the rationale behind some of the characters' behavior. Chikako was the most clear-cut with her leftover bitterness at being dismissed in favor of Mrs. Ota. She is outspoken, gossipy, and openly-conniving. I believe on a personal level, I was so divorced from the experiences of the other characters because I've never experienced anything like they have.

Nonetheless, even without forming a profound personal connection as I did with The Master of Go, the rich artistry of this novel makes it stand out against its contemporaries and distinguishes Kawabata as a master of his craft.

Piercing / Ryu Murakami
New York : Penguin, 2007
Originally published: 1997
Translated by Ralph McCarthy
192 p.

Kawashima Masayuki s a successful graphic designer living in Tokyo with his loving wife, Yoko, and their baby girl. Outwardly, their lives are a picture of happiness and contentment, but every night while his wife sleeps Kawashima creeps from his bed and watches of the baby's crib with an icepick in his hand and an almost visceral desire to use it.

One particular night, as this struggle unfolds once more, Kawashima makes a decision to confront his demons, and sets into motion an uncontrollable chain of events seeming to lead inexorably to murder. The follow-up to In the Miso Soup, Piercing confirms Ryu Murakami as the master of the psycho-thriller -- terrifying, sickening, and utterly gripping.

Ryu Murakami's work is very hit and miss to me. Some I find thoughtfully-crafted and insightful (like 69) and some I find to be overwrought pseudo-psychological ineffective cheap-shock drek (like Almost Transparent Blue.) Piercing lies somewhere in between.

Though the back cover advertizes the book as a follow-up to In the Miso Soup -- my favorite Ryu Murakami work and the only one where he successfully tells a story both horrific and sympathetic without overdoing either -- I don't find Piercing nearly as compelling.

It tells the story of Masayuki, described above standing over his baby's cradle with an ice pick. In order to get this drive out of his system, he decides to stab a woman and meticulously plans the murder. He calls an S&M callgirl service for his victim and is sent Chiaki, our other protagonist, who is also deranged and prone to psychotic breaks and cutting herself. The novel switches haphazardly between their perspectives through a night that goes horribly wrong for both of them, leading to them eventually finding a strange understanding and making some sort of connection.

Murakami does a good job in getting into their minds and portraying their psychosis and torment, but overall the story itself doesn't stand up, at least in today's society. Both characters' problems stem from parental abuse, which is not only somewhat cliche, but also (as presented here) too simplistic. "My mom hit me" and "My dad touched me" isn't enough to explain their current states. It just doesn't track. Plus, their individual breaks from reality are too disjointed and eventually leave the reader (not just the characters) alienated from any real connection.

This story was originally written in 1994, and our culture has come a long way since then, especially Japanese culture. We've seen this stuff before in other books and films like -- pardon the example -- Hostel, which, though miserably bad, makes Piercing feel dated. Today's audiences need more from their psychopaths.