These novellas bring the disaster of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami into focus using traditional fictional devices. The events of March 2011 are here brought to the fore in conventional narratives that embody some of the emotions that were engendered at the time, and that still animate Japanese society even eight years after the disaster occurred.
In ‘Sacred Cesium Ground’ a woman named Nishino goes to spend a few days to help run a farm in Fukushima where there are beef cattle that have been affected by radiation and that cannot be used. Nishino normally lives in Tokyo with an abusive husband and finds a congenial community in the northern region where her participation is valued and where she finds the kind of meaning that is not provided by her life in the capital.
In ‘Isa’s Deluge’, a middle-aged man named Shohji goes back home to Hachinohe, a city in Aomori, in the north of Japan, to meet with family and friends. In a discussion with his cousin Hitoshi, Shohji encounters stories about an uncle named Isa who was a bit of a tearaway. He also visits his father at a relative’s house, then goes to a middle-school reunion. At this function, he experiences a kind of fantasy that is influenced by the alcohol he has drunk.
In both of these stories the differences between the experiences of people living in the north of Honshu, the main Japanese island, and people living in Tokyo, is emphasised. The gap that separates people in the north who experienced the earthquake and tsunami and the people in the capital of Tokyo is of primary importance for both of these narratives. In fact, the stories in this book are mostly about that gap, that empty space in the body of the polity that people fill with their desires, their aspirations, and their fears.
The second of the stories is the more conventional, but both novellas have a delicate structure that makes them liable to be overlooked. In the first of these stories the burden of responsibility for the force of the narrative lies with a collective of people, in a way that readers of Kenzaburo Oe’s novels will be familiar with. In the second of the stories, the burden of responsibility for the narrative lies mostly with one character, so this story is perhaps easier to understand. Both stories are competently constructed and have credible narrative arcs that build suspense from a lively beginning and that terminate proceedings with bold éclat.
In a real sense, the events of March 2011 have to be understood in terms that these stories make clear: as a kind of psychic violence enacted on the whole country. Making sense of the events of that month, and the ensuing years of reconstruction and compensation, is a task for all Japanese people to engage in, but not all will be able to do it comfortably and without difficulty. This book is part of that process, and so it will mean more to Japanese readers than to people living outside the archipelago.
In ‘Sacred Cesium Ground’ a woman named Nishino goes to spend a few days to help run a farm in Fukushima where there are beef cattle that have been affected by radiation and that cannot be used. Nishino normally lives in Tokyo with an abusive husband and finds a congenial community in the northern region where her participation is valued and where she finds the kind of meaning that is not provided by her life in the capital.
In ‘Isa’s Deluge’, a middle-aged man named Shohji goes back home to Hachinohe, a city in Aomori, in the north of Japan, to meet with family and friends. In a discussion with his cousin Hitoshi, Shohji encounters stories about an uncle named Isa who was a bit of a tearaway. He also visits his father at a relative’s house, then goes to a middle-school reunion. At this function, he experiences a kind of fantasy that is influenced by the alcohol he has drunk.
In both of these stories the differences between the experiences of people living in the north of Honshu, the main Japanese island, and people living in Tokyo, is emphasised. The gap that separates people in the north who experienced the earthquake and tsunami and the people in the capital of Tokyo is of primary importance for both of these narratives. In fact, the stories in this book are mostly about that gap, that empty space in the body of the polity that people fill with their desires, their aspirations, and their fears.
The second of the stories is the more conventional, but both novellas have a delicate structure that makes them liable to be overlooked. In the first of these stories the burden of responsibility for the force of the narrative lies with a collective of people, in a way that readers of Kenzaburo Oe’s novels will be familiar with. In the second of the stories, the burden of responsibility for the narrative lies mostly with one character, so this story is perhaps easier to understand. Both stories are competently constructed and have credible narrative arcs that build suspense from a lively beginning and that terminate proceedings with bold éclat.
In a real sense, the events of March 2011 have to be understood in terms that these stories make clear: as a kind of psychic violence enacted on the whole country. Making sense of the events of that month, and the ensuing years of reconstruction and compensation, is a task for all Japanese people to engage in, but not all will be able to do it comfortably and without difficulty. This book is part of that process, and so it will mean more to Japanese readers than to people living outside the archipelago.
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