The Sunday Salon: Snow Country

I pulled quite a few books from my TBR stacks that have a winter theme or setting and saved them to read during the "bleak midwinter" as it were. Well, I live in a place that doesn't get snow and often feels more like summer during those winter months. Hardly bleak. I was hoping this would be one of our "cold" winters, but it has been consistently warm and sometimes quite hot. My seasonal expectations and reality just aren't in sync this year, so I've been living vicariously through my winter themed books.

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata is set in the mountains on the west coast of the main island of Japan. This setting is important to the story. The Introduction to my copy of Snow Country describes the setting:

"In the winter, cold winds blow down from Siberia, pick up moisture over the Japan Sea, and drop it as snow when they strike the mountains of Japan. The west coast of the main island of Japan is probably for its latitude the snowiest region of the world. From December to April or May only the railroads are open, and the snow in the mountains is sometimes as much as fifteen feet deep."

The setting and descriptive passages are often stunningly beautiful. It was this that kept me reading. The setting is cold and remote. The characters follow this pattern and this makes them unreachable and, ultimately, unlikeable. A cold and remote setting has a harsh beauty, but these same characteristics in people are unflattering. Nevertheless, it was this parallel between setting and characters that helped me overlook my dislike and focus on the writing to see the beauty of the whole.

The story takes place at a hot-springs in the snow country. Shimamura is a wealthy idle man who travels to the hot springs without his wife. Komako is one of the hot-springs geisha, a near outcast. There is a sense of wasted and decaying beauty in Snow Country and this comes across in the repeated thoughts of Shimamura about wastedness and in Komako's own impulsive and self destructive behavior. An "indefinable air of loneliness" surrounds Komako, and Shimamura's life seems empty. Shimamura is fascinated with the reflected images of others in mirrors and windows and is drawn to illusion over reality.

Again though, I'm pulled away from the characters themselves by the powerful images that the author creates. Images like that of the rounded snow covered mountain tops turned red by the rising or setting sun. This parallels Komako's white powdered neck curving to her rounded shoulders of red skin that flow and disappear into the wide neck of her kimono. Images of red and white recur throughout the novel and one could write an entire post on these images and metaphor.

I'm guessing there is much I missed for lack of cultural and literary understanding. The recurring themes  and images mean something. Metaphor is abundant. The entire novel is reminiscent of haiku that "seek[s] to convey a sudden awareness of beauty by a mating of opposite or incongruous terms … [a fusion of] motion and stillness" and a mingling of the senses. (Quote about haiku from the 1956 Introduction to the book.)

A deep vein of darkness and loneliness runs through Snow Country and this may not be to everyone's liking. Those who have an interest in Japanese literature, those who crave poetic writing, and those who love imagery or strongly visualize when they read will want to read this short novel by one of the masters of Japanese literature.

Related links:

The Sunday Salon is a weekly virtual get together where readers share thoughts about their reading. We write about books and reading on our own blogs and then visit and chat with other saloners through the comments feature.

Japanese Literature Challenge 7 hosted by Dolce Bellezza

BOOK REVIEW: Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto

Asleep is a collection of three short novellas, all of which focus on some aspect of death and also a sleeping, either literal or psychic, born of trauma.

Night and Night's Travelers
"Night and Night's Travelers" is a tale of the literal death of one and the resulting temporary emotional death of another. The narrator is Shibami and she tells the story of her "vibrantly charismatic" brother Yoshihiro and her dreamy cousin Mari. Yoshihiro and Mari are not only cousins, but lovers. After Yoshihiro's death, Mari withdraws and enters a year of dreamlike fog and sleepwalking.

Love Songs
"Love Songs" tells of the haunting of one woman by another. Fumi has found herself at the end of an affair and drinking to excess. She often hears a "soothing voice singing." This voice belongs to Haru, a dead woman with whom Fumi once shared her ex-lover. Fumi is drawn to this voice from the beyond and, through consultation with a midget psychic, is able to meet with Haru. In life, the two women were in a relationship of bitter resentment and jealousy, yet in this meeting of life and afterlife they find peace and friendship.

Asleep
"Asleep" is the story of Terako who shares the deep sleep of her lover's comatose wife. Mr. Iwanaga has an unusual effect on women ... he puts them to sleep. His wife is in a coma and his lover, Terako, becomes increasingly sleepy. As Terako separates herself from Mr. Iwanaga and creates her own life, she finds a new energy.

Supernatural occurrences seem natural throughout the stories in Asleep. The language is sparse, creating silences and the stories lack any attempt to draw the reader in emotionally. Yoshimoto's writing style reminded me of minimalist Japanese decor. The setting is sparse, but what is there is beautiful. The writing often seems like a prose version of haiku:

Late at night the trees in my garden seemed to shine.
Awash in light from the street, the quiet glittering green of the
leaves and the deep brown of the trunk seemed startlingly vivid.

Those looking for an exciting read will not find it in Asleep. What the reader will find is a quiet and beautiful collection of stories that take the vicissitudes of life in stride.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

This title was read as part of the Japanese Literature Challenge II hosted by Bellezza.

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Note to other reviewers: If you've written a review for this book, please let me know by posting the permanent URL for your review in the comments. I'll be happy to add a link to your review with my post.

Also reviewed by:
nymeth at things mean a lot

BOOK REVIEW: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Everything is metaphor. Nothing is metaphor. Metaphor is reality. Murakami takes the reader on a surreal trip that will leave you breathless while also leaving you to wonder what you missed.

Kafka on the Shore is, in part, a quest. Fifteen year old Kafka Tamura runs from home in order to pursue his past, to find his mother and sister who haven't been seen since he was a little boy, and to find out who he is apart from his father. His quest begins as he seeks for answers to his past, but at some point in the journey he realizes the futility of this and turns to pursue his future instead. The story alternates between Kafka and an elderly gentleman by the name of Mr. Nakata. Nakata wants to find the half of himself that was lost when he was a young boy during World War II. A mysterious event left Nakata unable to read, and in his own words, "not very bright." As he journeys, Nakata is not sure where he is going or what he is looking for, but intuits that he will know it when he sees it.

The mysterious event of World War II, which took a part of Mr. Nakata, remains a blurry element of the novel. It is never looked at directly, but is something that is seen in the "peripheral vision" and is similar to those things that, in the darkness, are better seen when looked at indirectly. Mr. Nakata can not remember what happened and suffers an amnesia that might be metaphor for a national amnesia surrounding the events of World War II. I am aware of the concept of national amnesia, but am hardly an expert in this area and so will leave this thought to be pursued by those better qualified.

Murakami is known for his use of magical realism, and Kafka on the Shore has plenty of opportunity for the reader to suspend his or her disbelief. Talking cats, fish raining from the sky, and appearances by Johnny Walker and Colonel Sanders should not surprise Murakami's readers. If this isn't enough to confuse many of us, Murakami also takes occasional jaunts into the metaphysical realm.

The novel is often confusing and requires the reader to simply follow where Murakami leads. The ending is ambiguous, but somehow the book makes sense without a coherent resolution. Murakami has written a novel that is hopeful and speaks of the human capacity to go forward and reach for that "brand-new world" that is constantly before us.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

This title was read as part of the Japanese Literature Challenge II hosted by Bellezza.

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Note to other reviewers: If you've written a review for this book, please let me know by posting the permanent URL for your review in the comments. I'll be happy to add a link to your review with my post.

Also reviewed at:
Trish at Trish's Reading Nook
nymeth at things mean a lot
Bellezza at Dolce Bellezza
Tanabata at In Spring it is the Dawn

BOOK REVIEW: Out by Natsuo Kirino

Just when you think it can't get any worse ... it does. This novel is a great example of noir literature. It has the usual noir elements of darkness, despair, hopelessness and betrayal. Layered on top of this noir novel is a very black comedy of gender warfare.

A young mother, living in the Tokyo suburbs and working the night shift at a boxed lunch factory, wants out of her miserable marriage to a philandering and abusive husband. Her solution? Strangle him. Unfortunately, this solution creates a new problem ... a dead body that needs to disappear. Fortunately, this young mother has empathetic lady friends who are equally desperate to get "out" of their own miserable circumstances and are therefore willing to help dispose of the body.

Unfortunately for these ladies, they find that the nightmare has just begun and this one act has pulled them into the "violent underbelly of Japanese society." In usual noir-ish fashion, all does not end well and no solutions are offered to resolve the hostilities between the sexes.

This is not my favorite type of reading, but I thought the story was well done and was an excellent example of noir and black comedy. The translation, by Stephen Snyder, seemed extraordinarily good to me; I never once thought about the fact that I was reading the book in translation.

Rating: 4 out of 5

This title was read as part of the Japanese Literature Challenge II hosted by Bellezza.

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Note to other reviewers: If you've written a review for this book, please let me know by posting the permanent URL for your review in the comments. I'll be happy to add a link to your review with my post.

Also reviewed at:
In Spring it is the Dawn (Tanabata)
Musings of a Bookish Kitty (Literary Feline)
Book Sanctuary (Tracey)
Dolce Bellezza

BOOK REVIEW: After Dark by Haruki Murakami

I find myself thinking about Murakami's books long after I've read them. Murakami compares writing to jazz music and with his writing it is true. Just as I find myself humming memorable bits from songs like Take Five, I also come back again and again to passages of Murakami's novels and short stories. I don't always recognize the deeper meaning in his works right away, but like a piece of music his writing continues to work on me over time.

After Dark takes place in Tokyo between the "witching" hours of midnight and dawn. The nighttime setting lends itself to the loneliness and alienation of the characters. We are never drawn too close to these characters, but instead we watch and listen, along with the narrator, as though through a camera as it zooms in or out and then pans around at times giving us mere glimpses of the wider setting. The story is told in scenes of dialogue between six characters within segments of sequential time. Mari is a 19 year old university freshman who perceives herself as plain and dull, especially compared to her beautiful older sister Eri. Mari has for some reason, known only to her, decided to stay up all night reading at a Denny's. She is joined several times throughout the night by Tetsuya, a young jazz musician. Mari is unexpectedly drawn into the lives of a large female ex-wrestler who now manages a "love hotel," a Chinese prostitute, and two women with mysterious backgrounds who hide under cover of night and transient jobs.

These scenes are interrupted occasionally as we, the camera, look in on Mari's older sister Eri who sleeps. Her sleep is reminiscent of that deep and complete slumber of Sleeping Beauty. Several months previous to the night our story takes place, Eri announces to her family that she is "going to sleep for awhile"; she has not woken since. On this particular night she is watched by something or someone menacing. Eri has withdrawn completely and may or may not find her way back. We are not sure if she is being controlled by the menacing presence or if her continued slumber is by choice. The scenes with Eri are eerie and unexplained.

Much in this short novel is left unexplained. In one of the more magical scenes, an image of a man wavers, his outline bends, quality fades, static rises. Murakami's story is very much like the image of this man. We can't always see clearly what it is that the author is showing us. I don't think this is an accident or poor writing. I believe Murakami does this intentionally and the reader must look for meaning in a less cognitive way. As the author says through his character Tetsuya,

"You send the music deep enough into your heart so that it makes your body undergo a kind of a physical shift, and simultaneously the listener's body also undergoes the same kind of physical shift. It's giving birth to that kind of shared state."

Murakami's works are very much a shared state. Not everyone will find his writing to their liking, but those who can resonate with the author will find themselves coming back for more.

Rating: 4 out of 5

More Murakami: "Understanding Murakami" my post about Murakami; "Jazz Messenger" essay by Murakami in the NYT Sunday Book Reviews

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Note to other reviewers: Let me know if you've written a review of After Dark or other Murakami works and I'll add a link to your review in my post. Please leave the permanent URL to your review in the comments.

Other Murakami reviews:
Books 'N Border Collies (Lezlie): After Dark
My Own Little Reading Room (guatami tripathy): Kafka on the Shore
In Spring it is the Dawn (tanabata): Kafka on the Shore, After Dark
Things Mean a Lot (nymeth): Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Stainless Steel Droppings (Carl V.): After Dark
Bibliophile by the Sea (Diane): After Dark
A Book Sanctuary (Tracey): After Dark