Sublime, Constrained and Powerful
By Deepak Singh

Before Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri and Mohsin Hamid captured the imagination of the West, Japanese novelists had made a striking and lasting impression on the modern reader. In fact, Japan even boasts two Nobel Prizes in Literature awarded to Yasunari Kawabata (1899 - 1972) and Oe Kenzaburo (1935 - ). Modern Japanese literature is a must-read for any cultured reader; unique for its spare, textured prose, modern surreal settings and sublime erotic tension, Japanese novels have been translated into English and have been immensely popular outside Japan.

Here EGO reviews three novels by favorite authors of the EGO staff.

SECRET RENDEZVOUS
By Kobo Abe

Secret Rendezvous is not nearly as famous as Kobo Abe's Woman In The Dunes but it carries his characteristic absurd surrealistic settings in which protagonists search for identity, security and communication. It is one of the best books by this phenomenal Japanese author (1924 - 1993) who is often likened to Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco. The reader follows the bizarrely erotic and comic adventures of a man frantically searching for his missing wife in a mysteriously vast underground hospital. Taking orders from a man who thinks he is a horse, the unnamed hero finds himself in a nightmarish labyrinth of sex experiments, ubiquitous surveillance and a stream of odd and violent patients and staff as he hopelessly searches for his wife. With its horrific comic commentry on modern medicine and modern life, Secret Rendezvous is an incredible and entertaining roller coaster of a novel from Japan’s most gifted and original writer.

"One summer morning an ambulance suddenly drove up, although no one remembered having sent for one, and carried away the man's wife."

192 pages; Vintage Books USA; (July 9, 2002)

NORWEGIAN WOOD
By Haruki Murakami

Without a doubt, Haruki Murakami (1949 - ) rules as the Japanese author most well-known outside Japan today. In Japan, it was Norwegian Wood that propelled Murakami onto the bestseller lists. The title takes its cue from the Beatles song "Norwegian Wood" and tugs as effectively at the heartstrings of the reader. A masterful medley of the music and mood of the sixties, Norwegian Wood is the coming-of-age story of Toru, a quiet and serious young college student in Tokyo. Toru is drawn to Naoki, the beautiful and introspective girlfriend of his best friend who committed suicide some years ago. His friend's death continues to haunt Toru and Naoko when they enter college and complicates the intimate connection they feel between them. While Toru adapts to campus life, Naoko finds the responsibilities of adult life unbearable and retreats further into herself. Pain-stricken and lonely, Toru tries to find his way by reaching out to other people including to the fiercely independent young woman Midori. The novel poignantly, and with gentle retrospection, recaptures a young man's first, hopeless and heroic love.

"There was something strange about Naoko's becoming twenty. I felt as if the only thing that made sense, whether for Naoko or for me, was to keep going back and forth between eighteen and nineteen. After eighteen would come nineteen, and after nineteen, eighteen. Of course. But she turned twenty. And in the fall, I would do the same. Only the dead stay seventeen forever."

296 pages; Vintage Books USA; (September 12, 2000)

KITCHEN
By Banana Yoshimoto

In Japan, "Banana Mania" ensued after Banana Yoshimoto (1964 - ) published her best-selling novella Kitchen. Born Yoshimoto Mahoko - she took on the androgynous pseudonym "Banana" when she started writing seriously - she wrote Kitchen when only 23 years old. Written during breaks when she was a waitress in a restaurant, the novel won the Umitsubame First Novel Prize and has so far had over sixty printings in Japan alone. The novel revolves around a young girl, Mikage, who finds herself alone after the death of her grandmother, her last living relative. In a bizarre twist, a young acquaintance of her grandmother's, Yuichi, turns up at her doorstep soon afterward and offers a home with his transsexual father Erico. What ensues is an intimate gentle relationship between the three characters as they struggle each with mortality, sexual identity and loneliness. All throughout, the kitchen and food is a backdrop offered as a means of comfort and sublimation. Surprisingly insightful, the novel grapples with Mikage's existential angst as she moves into adult life and reaches out for love.

"The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me."

160 pages; Washington Square Press; Reprint edition (March 1, 1994)