Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Random Fragments

Bad Translation

Translator's note: This document was found in 1882. A man named Katsuhiro was staggering down the road through a violent rain storm in Akita in Northern Japan. He was there delivering a message to a consulate regarding military conscription. He endured a great many misfortunes on his way there, including getting carjacked.
In places, the road was so wet that it became a muddy swamp. The man went down a narrow path off to the side to find some cover from the rain. A muddy embankment protruded to his left. As he passed, something caught his eye. He moved in closer to examine it. It seemed to be the corner of a slim metal case. Driblets of mud ran down it. The rain must have uncovered it. He worried the case out of the embankment. In it, he found the following story
.

The evening was disquieted, and, despite a lacking of any solid evidence indicating so, everyone knew that it would rain. The virtue was in deciding when precisely the clouds would burst and the rain would come pouring down. The smug were always early in their predilections. The dumb were not to be considered, as theirs were always far off the mark and without explanation. The more subtly clever, those that had advanced beyond the smug, were usually closer to the mark, but even they were early. It was only those who sat quietly off to the side, with little movement, that knew precisely when the rains would come down.

And sure enough, though no one had asked him, middle-aged Yukio was the only one in the room who made the correct prediction. That night, at 3 o'clock in the morning, the dark clouds opened up. It was truly a violent storm, and one of the mistresses of the palace awoke. It was not clear whether the storm woke her up, or if there was another reason, but she was up nonetheless. In another area of the quarters, a maid had lain awake the whole time. She noted it to herself when she heard the rain. She had made the correct the prediction.

Trans.: R. Morris, 1932

---

Story Fragment

Where is Kinu Tanaka? I repeat the question over and over again...

I was in a small village in Chiba prefecture, Tomosaki. From across the bay, we could see the lights of Tokyo. The Japanese were incredibly civil. I could hardly believe it, especially since they were wildcats on the battlfield, fighting to the death in battles where French or Russian soldiers would wave the white flag in surrender.
But I was far from the battlefield in Tomosaki. Every day, I'd wake up and feed the pigeons, walking under the Buddhist trellis and past the trimmed bushes.
Occasionally I would dream of being back home, and she would come to me, embrace me. My queen with a head of fire. But those dreams were far and few between. My time in Japan is remembered warmly. The Japanese (I refuse to call them "Japs") loved their sake, and I daresay they drank to excess. The master of the house, Kado Tanaka, had old samurai swords mounted on his wall, and he let me play with them and practice with them in my spare time. My leg wasn't good for much after a Japanese musket ball struck the kneecap, but I could still walk, albeit with a limp. I didn't feel as though I truly knew how to defend myself when I was without my gun. The samurai-play made me feel more confident in my own power. I would spend hours out there, chopping at the air or bamboo.
How did I get there?
Noncom boat...terror...explosion...shrapnel...below water...gasping for breath...arms around my arms...air...darkness.
My eyes opened in the idyllic town of Tomosaki, a place which, according to every expert I've talked to, doesn't and has never existed.
I didn't speak Japanese. My hosts communicated with me in a makeshift dialectic of hand gestures, eye movements and facial expressions. That is one of my greatest regrets. I never truly met Kado and Hitomi Tanaka. They were about as strange to me when I arrived as when I left.
That was in the beginning. Later, I had my own house, that was when the business with Kinu Tanaka started. He was their son. I never knew how old he was, but I'd say about eight. He was away at school for the first three weeks when I arrived. That was in May, year of the Hare.
I was sitting in the office of my white house on the edge of town when the bell rang. I had no maid to take the visitor's card, so I opened the door myself. Before me stood a beggar. He was old, his head bent, missing teeth. He wore a rag of a tunic, ripped at the shoulder, which made it look like a Greek toga. The tunic was scarlet red. His knees were dirty.
I said nothing. Just stared hard at him. He grinned his toothless grin and held out his hands in a beseeching manner. I cleared my throat.
"Yes?" He shook his head. He must be mute, I thought. He stepped into my house. "Sir!" I tried to remain polite, but this was most unusual. He continued to grin and shook his head, rather condescendingly. He wiped his dirty sandals off on the welcome mat and walked on purposefully.
In America, I would have applied force to the old man, but something about this cozy village made me feel secure. I followed the mute beggar. He went around the corner and down the stairs into the basement. The basement had fallen into disuse. After all, I was the only one who lived here, and I only occupied a few rooms in the house.
A little background on the house: Despite the language difficulties, I became close to the Tanaka family. I stayed there for 11 months, working alongside the women in the rice paddies to earn my keep. I had a few enemies in the village, unsurprisingly, and many men jeered at me as they passed by. But I learned to ignore them. The women loved me. I joined them in their rice-picking songs, my American baritone a sore thumb amidst the chorus of oriental tenors. The work was rather miserable. Foraging around with your fingers underwater, in the mud, coming home wet and dirty every day, it gets old. But I couldn't complain. The Tanakas were wealthy, and they liked me, despite our differences. Kado correctly predicted the influence of America on the rest of the world, and he became excited whenever the television broadcast an American show or news on America. He loved American cars, and asked me to sketch them for him. I've always had a proficiency with drawing.
The Tanakas had a house that was recently vacated with the death of Grandpa Tanaka. It was a white, bright, clean house. It wasn't a sad place. The Tanakas had accepted his death with grace and understanding. When I could no longer stay with them, the Tanakas invited me to stay in the grandparents' house. I graciously accepted the offer, and had been living there for 2 two weeks when the beggar came to my door.
We went down the stairs to the far wall. The beggar tapped it, revealing that the wall was actually made of a relatively thin rice paper. Then, he tore the delicate paper and ripped the wall down. A Buddhist altar glowed in the darkness. I knew it must be the Tanaka family altar. The beggar lit a match, his eyes gleaming. The darkness ebbed away, and I saw the altar in the light. My God I thought. Stacks and stacks on money sat on the altar, right at the foot of the Buddha statue. They were neat stacks, covered in a light film of dust. The beggar grinned his toothless grin. He made as if to walk away.
"Wait" I said, grabbing the back of his shoulder. He was frail. "What is your name? Write it down." I fumbled for a piece of paper and a pen and handed it to him. He wrote down a Japanese figure I couldn't decipher and handed the paper back to me. He walked away, leaving me alone in the darkness save for a torn open wall and a small fortune in yen.

. . .

The telephone burst into sound. "RRRRRRINNNNNGGGGGG." I dashed up from the basement to answer it. This was the first time the phone had ever rang. I didn't even know I had one.
"Hello?"
"William?"
"Hello?"
"William – William Garbo, it's me – Peter."
"Peter...Peter Cantor. Holy shit..."
"Yeah! It's me! Everyone here thinks you're dead, Willy." I exhaled an excited breath, unsure whether to laugh or cry.
"I'm alive and well Pete, alive and well...how the hell did you contact me? God it feels good to speak English again..."
"A helluva lot of research...those Japs don't speak any Ingrish, huh? Hahaa...Well anyway, I contacted every known survivor of Midway, until I tracked down some old crackpot named T-Bone Willis–"
"T-Bone...jesus..."
"Yeah, T-Bone, he's in a shelter now...but he said you and him got kinda tight on the ol' creaker."
"Yeah."
"Yeah, he said his last memory of you was hopping into a life-boat and heading toward the jap boat for some kind of Indiana Jones mission or something."
I laughed uneasily, "War does strange things to people."
"Yeah...well, after that, I looked into any records of hostages with the Japanese. Tried to talk to the embassy, but its all chaos over there. Seems every high-ranking official involved with the war has up and left town. Anway, there aren't any records, the Japs are already trying to forget about all this. But I heard that the ship, the Karyu, was sold off to some rich investor from Tokyo. I called him up, real worldly type. Spoke good English, knew more about our economy than I do. He told me what he knew about the history of his boat. After the battle of Midway, it was moored in the bay until he bought it. He didn't know anything about any hostages though.
He connected me to an old major in the Japanese army. That was rough, lemme tell you. Real tight-lipped. The Japs don't deal well with humiliation. He told me that any hostages who weren't beheaded were usually brought into camps...but...after the war, there was no need to hold onto them. He told me that, usually, well, hostages are left to fend for themselves on the streets."
Memories came flooding back to me. I was...adopted. They were carting us off to anyone who would make an offer. Two angry teenagers were given custody of me. They weren't too happy about the war, I gathered. They took me to the wharf, tied some cinderblocks to my ankles, and threw me into Tokyo Bay.
"William," a soft tone entered his voice, "When are you coming back?"
"I– I don't know." We paused in silence, him expecting a reply, me thinking what to say. "I've built a life here. I've got a house and everything."
"Why did you never try to contact us?" He sounded genuinely hurt.
"Well–," I started, "I guess...I just wanted to get my bearings, give my leg some time to heal, then I figured I'd start trying to get back. I didn't know where the hell to start looking."
"Well, you're coming back now, right? We can all pitch in for the plane ticket."
I thought about going back to America. Back to normalcy. Back to Rhonda. There was life in America before the war, but could there be life in America afterwards? I felt like I was truly possessionless here, my memory wiped. I had been...reborn on the shores of Tomosaki. How could I go back?
"William?"
The voice came to me from a thousand miles away. It was a voice from the past. I thought about the voice in my ear, and then I looked around at the bright, clean-swept house. If only I'd gone back to America like everyone else, I thought to myself. But no, I'm here. I would go to America today, I thought, if only there wasn't a war standing between me and it.
"Pete, buddy, I can't go back immediately. I just came upon an opportunity to make a large sum of money here and Japan, and I want to pursue that. So I'll have enough money to support me and Rhonda when we start a family." He'll understand money. There was a long pause at the other end of the line, like he was waiting for me to change my mind. He sighed.
"Ok."
I wrote down his phone number and address. I gave him my address, told him where I was in Tomosaki, near Tokyo. Then we said goodbye and hung up.

Monday, November 24, 2008

A Wild Sheep Chase

Finished reading 'A Wild Sheep Chase' yesterday. Not much to report, although I've come to a greater understanding of Murakami's approach to writing. First of all, he has flaws like everyone else, which is somewhat comforting. For one, his stories all follow the same general mold: ordinary guy, first person narration, usually lives in the city, something strange/otherworldy is introduced, the story begins in earnest, more strange stuff happens, the narrator undergoes a transformation. End. The commonalities don't stop: every novel I've read so far has linked in some way back Japanese history, often incorporating WWII or the little-publicized Japan-Russo War. More often than not, narrators are interchangeable between stories (a fact which Murakami has slyly acknowledged by naming his narrators "Toru" in several different novels). Another common feature is the transplantation of the narrator from the city into other, more obscure regions of Japan. Kafka goes to Shikoku. A Wild Sheep Chase's narrator (who is strangely unnamed) goes to Hokkaido. Toru from WBC goes to the city from the suburbs.

Anyway, onto the meat and potatoes:

This novel gave me an intense appreciation for the author's way with words. He writes with utter confidence in his artistic vision, and, as a result, is able to get away with things many writers could not: ridiculous dialogue, acrobatic prose, unbelievable characters and plot twists. All is smoothed over though, in the strength of Murakami's conviction.

The guy is also a damn good writer (Other reviewers I've read have also given credit his translator, Alfred Birnbaum; one went so far as to call the two "Spiritual twins." Interestingly, I did not notice any major differences between this and 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,' which was translated by Jay Rubin, or, for that matter, 'Kafka on the Shore,' which was translated by J. Phillip Gabriel. This is a good thing in my book, showing an absence of coloration by the translators). He is a master of writing just enough words to convey the message, and he has a special way with intimate details. I can remember one passage of weighty dialogue near the end of the book, after which the narrator declares "My mouth was all dry inside." This seemingly frivolous detail actually contributes to the text in many ways, most of which I can't claim to understand. These details serve to make the plot believable, as well as make the reader feel as though he or she is experiencing the novel up close and personal. A far cry from, say, 'The Tale of Genji,' a novel whose details were as murky as the ancient world it described.

Murakami's writing is sharp, clear and focused. He has the whole package – excellence in both form and content. His words have a rhythm, but they also convey a message. Take one passage where the narrator grabs a doorknob and finds it is loose, which prompts him to compare it to "an old molar." A most excellent metaphor, befitting in both the sounds of the words (consonance in ow-ld and mow-lar) and the image conveyed (molars have their own peculiar brand of looseness – as many of us have discovered twiddling them around with our tongues all day).

The novel itself is a bit strange. It starts with an account of a high school lover– now-deceased, lapses into the modern day life of the narrator, takes a break for some letters from a friend, and then – finally – the story begins in earnest. Precious pages are spent going into the life stories of extraneous characters. Before you know it, the novel is over. When it ended, I wasn't left with much of an impression. This may be one I have to re-read.

Central to the story is the sheep. The sheep seems to represent an amoral, immortal Will, and it "gets" into certain characters. The narrator is assigned to find this sheep. At the book's conclusion, the narrator's friend, The Rat, dies with the sheep in him, seemingly burying the dangerous will forever. I suppose this is the "deeper meaning" of the novel, although I can state this only on a superficial level. Murakami's novels are messy; they aren't confined to one theme. And this one is particularly messy, feeling more like a fragment of some larger story than a novel in its own right.

It was a pleasure to read, it will be a pleasure to re-read.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Update

I'm currently reading (at home) Murakami's 'A Wild Sheep Chase.' In class, I am reading Murakami's short stories as well as short stories by Yasunari Kawabata.

A brief note on Kawabata: His stories can best be described as long haikus. He's an expert at layering on different images, eventually conveying a unique mood to the reader. If Soseki is only subtly Japanese, Kawabata is intensely Japanese. His short (very short!) stories have been called "palm-of-the-hand" stories, short fables to re-read. They are rich in Japanese imagery, and, in many cases difficult to understand. Reading them, like many of the other works I've examined, requires the utmost concentration. Nonetheless, I enjoy his imagery immensely.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

More "I am a Cat"

Yesterday I sorrowfully returned "I am a Cat" to the interlibrary loan department of DeKalb Public Library. The library we borrowed it from, Lamar University Library (???) has a "no-renewal" policy. I was about halfway through with the book, and I was beginning to appreciate some of its subtleties.

For one, I underestimated the complexity of the characters. I originally assumed the master to be an antagonistic force, representative of every thing that was wrong with humans, but it turns out that he may actually be one of the good guys in the story. It's still, as of the last time reading, ambiguous whether the cat likes or dislikes or his master. I think that, despite all his criticisms of the master, he still has some reserve of respect for him.

The latest plot development is that the cat has been snooping around in the yard of Goldfield, a wealthy businessman. Goldfield an his wife, called Madame Conk for her large nose, are intent on betrothing their daughter to Coldmoon, the former pupil of the master. Where I left off, Suzuki, a sycophantic businessman indebted to Goldfield for something or another, was visiting the Master (whose name is Sneaze, strangely enough) in an attempt to get him to urge Coldmoon to write his thesis and thus achieve the status of doctor. Suzuki was doing a good job of persuading him when who should come along but Waverhouse. Waverhouse is another hilarious character. An eternal critic, he claims to have dedicated his life to the study of aesthetics but has never produced paper nor poem on the topic. Once, he and Sneaze made a bet that if Waverhouse produced a paper on aesthetics, Sneaze would treat him to a fancy French dinner. Waverhouse never even started, but he refused to pay for the meal, saying that his intentions to produce the paper had never once flickered, he had just never gotten around to actually doing it. He isn't dumb, just lazy, or impotent.

Undoubtedly, Waverhouse, acting in his usual manner, ruined Suzuki's tactful entreatments, and the two had a good time mocking Madame Conk's eponymous organ, all to the consternation of Suzuki. This is as far as I read.

Anyhow, these characters are not the one-dimensional, hapless pseudo-academics I once took them for. As it turns out, there's a little more subtlety involved. Earlier, I commented on the un-Japanese-ness of the novel. I would like, partially, partially retract that statement. It's true that many of the physical details seem Westernized. Dialogue and names are two of the big ones. This may be due to the translation. Who knows. However, I would still regard the subject matter and plot as Eastern in nature. Similar to Tale of Genji, there is no plot. It's the unremarkable story of a cat's life. And life doesn't always play out like an action movie. This is a trait of Japanese literature. Also, the non-duality of the characters is Eastern in nature. Thus far, there are no purely good or bad characters. Rather – and again, this is like real life – the characters are a complex of emotions. I don't believe the author went out of his way to make this so, either. Rather, I believe that the Japanese take a different approach to literature, and when, writing characters, they make these characters seem realistic, and not symbolic for anything greater. Unfortunately, the book is out of my hands now. I may request it again, but I'm a little sore after that whole ordeal, which cost me a total of $5.60, and I only kept the book (which is a 600-pager) for two weeks!

Monday, November 3, 2008

A Brief Summary of "I am a Cat"

I am currently engaged in reading "I am a Cat" by Natsume Soseki and "The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Short Stories" by Yasunari Kawabata.

The Soseki book was the breakout novel for the author, who's face is featured on one of the yen bills in Japan. It's a long novel, 637 pages, and its rather a disappointment, considering the fact its considered a masterwork from one of Japan's finest. Granted, I've only reached page 80, but every review I've read indicates that not much changes, whether you're on page 80 or page 500. Much like 'Tale of Genji', the book follows no arc but for the line of chronological time. I suppose that, if a cat ever wrote a novel, this is what it would be like: a cat merely reporting on the day's events. It sleeps, catches a grass-hopper, eavesdrops on the master's conversation, eats, sleeps some more...ad infinitum. This is not to say it is not a fun novel. It is. But it can't be ranked as a literary achievement on the same order as Murakami's 'Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' for instance.

But the book isn't all fluff. It's deceptively simple, but a little reading between the lines reveals some salient social comment. The first thing that I noticed about the book is how strikingly un-Japanese it is. The cat's master, who is a some sort of teacher, convenes regularly with a group of academic friends named Coldmoon, Waverhouse, and Beauchamp. They make reference to William James, John Locke and the ancient Greeks. At first I wasn't sure what to make of this, but I eventually realized this is a calculated move on the author's part. Soseki lived during the height of the Meiji restoration, when Japan's feudal policies were being cleared out to make way for more Western practices. I think Soseki's portrait of academic life in this time as told from a cat's point of view is meant to show the lack of respect Japan was showing to its own cultural history. The master, who is left unnamed, is often dwarfed in the conversations by the prowess of his peers – Coldmoon, Waverhouse, etc. The master is meant to represent the little guy in Japan, one who is unwillingly being swept along in the influx of Western culture and practices.

Of course, Soseki's aims are more broad than this. He also attempts to show the overall selfishness of man by portraying human life through the objective eyes of a cat. A third theme is the silliness of academia, and its non-validity as a way of life. This comes across in the conversations between the master and his friends, who tell pseudo-profound stories to eachother, only to elicit that timeless vagary: "Interesting." In one hilarious scene, the master excitedly tells Waverhouse of a story he translated, saying its one of the finest pieces of prose he's ever read. Adopting the "tone of a Zen monk" he relates an American children's story, explaining with utter seriousness how "Kate threw the ball up. Then the ball came down."

I would like to return to what I have termed the "Un-Japanese"-ness of the novel. If you didn't know the context of the novel, you would think that it was set in 20th century England. I'm sure some of Soseki's Western over-the-top-ness is intentional, but I'm not so sure about all of it. Soseki spent two miserable years studying abroad in London. Perhaps here his style was mutated permanently.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Haiku

Everything
Is a metaphor
Except this

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

More

House with a banana-tree next door
From such surroundings
What else did you expect?

Old, blackened steel trellis
Over the mighty river
Leads to a dusty road

Seeing things
As they truly are
Haiku

Glory
Four horsemen of light
Never-ending Victory