![]() You see, Takako is in the mood for some partner-swapping of her own, and as the story progresses, we learn of her desire for her neighbour, her other affair, the neighbour’s wife’s scheming and the jealousy displayed by her own husband. Hiding the newspaper was not her only sin. She pictured herself squatting there, disgracefully posed, and suddenly found herself besieged by sinful thoughts. Impatiently, Takako tried to jam the newspaper that contained the story in near the bottom of the stack she was making in the corner of the closet, but she couldn’t make it go in. We begin with a scene featuring a woman reading in a newspaper of couples overseas who swapped their partners, and her surprise at how simple it all seems sets the scene for what’s to follow: It’s by far the longest piece here, divided into short chapters, and provides a clever take on marital life and romantic entanglements. Perhaps my favourite inclusion was the opening story, ‘This Country, That Country’. ‘First Snow on Fuji’, p.132 (Counterpoint, 1999)ĭespite the initial awkwardness, they eventually begin to recognise each other beneath the mask of years, realising that even after so much time, a connection still exists. He didn’t want her to feel that he was staring at her, but he didn’t know where else to look. And so from searching out the Utako he had known in the Utako before him, from trying not to see the Utako before him, his own eyes came to have a fatigued look to them. It was painful for him to look at her haggard features. Jirō wanted to see Utako’s face as it used to be. It’s a gentle, understated piece, in which we see each through the other’s eyes, learning how time has changed them: For example, the title story has two former lovers on an overnight trip to Hakone, an impulse decision taken after an encounter at the station. These are all mere glimpses of the whole and leave the reader searching for meaning between the lines.įor me, though, the longer pieces were more enjoyable. In ‘A Row of Trees’, a family is surprised at the way leaves have fallen from trees at the bottom of a hill, but not at the top, with this anecdote then blending into a story of the daughter, an old visitor and a missing purse. ![]() ‘Raindrops’ consists of conversations in a house on a rainy night, with the sound of ambulance sirens in the distance, whereas ‘Her Husband Didn’t’ is a short tale of a middle-aged woman’s affair with a student, and the reasons behind it. ![]() Several of the shorter offerings here feature a rather dense, oblique style, with much packed into a few pages. It was at this time that he produced the short-story collection First Snow on Fuji, consisting of ten pieces reflecting his desire to make the most of the time available to him for writing. According to translator Michael Emmerich, the writer was very busy in the late 1950s with his work promoting Japanese literature, in particular helping to organize the international P.E.N. You might think that Yasunari Kawabata, one of Japan’s two Nobel Prize in Literature laureates, needs no introduction, but you’re probably unaware of his work for the Japan P.E.N. Hopefully, I’ll be able to introduce you to some lesser-known authors along the way, but we kick off today with some stories by a very familiar face – 行きましょう!!! This year I’ll be spending the month in the company of some great writers and works, with a mix of the new and the old in a variety of styles and genres. What started off as a full-blown blogging event several years back is now more of a personal journey, but it does coincide with Bellezza’s Japanese Literature Challenge (running from January to March), and I’m always happy to persuade others to pick up a book or two. While it’s taken a while to wrap 2020 up completely, what with all the awards and stats and general reflections to be taken care of, it’s finally time to start the new year off properly, and what better way to do so than with my now traditional January in Japan reading project? None, of course □ ![]()
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