A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

From the description:

On a remote island in the Pacific Northwest, a Hello Kitty lunchbox washes up on the beach.  Tucked inside is a collection of curious items: an antique wristwatch, a pack of indecipherable letters, and the diary of a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl named Nao Yasutani.  Ruth, who finds the lunchbox, suspects that it is debris from Japan's devastating 2011 tsunami.  Once Ruth starts to read the diary, she quickly finds herself drawn into the mystery of the young girl's fate.

I almost didn't finish this book.  Honestly, I almost didn't even really start it.  The first chapter of the book opens with an overly perky introduction by Nao, an explanation of what a time being is, and speculation about the reader.  In her next section, she realizes that she sounded ridiculous in the first part (looking back, it's actually charming) and then describes the otaku sitting next to her and speculates what would happen if she went with him and let him buy her things and take her to a hotel (she decides he'll murder her).  After that, she settles in and begins to tell her story.

In the next section, Ruth, a writer who lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest, finds Nao's diary and begins reading it.  There's significant overlap in the language since Ruth is of Japanese descent and Nao had lived in America for most of her life before her family returned to Japan.  Nao writes her journal mostly in English and Ruth is able to understand or look up the Japanese parts.  The story progresses through Ruth reading Nao's diary and then interacting with people in her own life, especially regarding her discovery of the diary and her attempt to read the French letters.  Later, both Nao and Ruth begin to learn the story of Haruki #1, Nao's great-uncle, the son her great-grandmother, Jiku.

While Ruth is struggling to learn more about Nao and her family, Nao is struggling to survive.  Since her father lost his job as a programmer in America, the family had to return to Japan in significantly reduced circumstances.  They live in a tiny apartment in a bad part of town, her father doesn't seek employment, and Nao is bullied by her classmates.  Eventually, Nao's mother gets a job to try to support the family and her father, named Haruki for his uncle, sinks into depression and makes several suicide attempts.

When her parents learn the extent of the bullying, they send her to stay with Jiko, a 104 year old Buddhist nun who lives in a temple.  In addition to learning more about Buddhism, Nao also learns about Haruki #1, who studied French philosophy at the university before being drafted into an army fighting a losing war.  He volunteers to become a kamikaze pilot, partly because it would raise his rank after his death and increase the pension Jiku was paid, and partly because he wanted to choose his own death.

Meanwhile, Ruth and her husband, Oliver, are trying to learn more about Nao and her family.  They discover information not only about Haruki #1, but Haruki #2, which puts him in a completely different light.   All of this information might have an impact on the events that are slowly unfolding in the diary. (Haruki #2 isn't the only one planning suicide.  Nao is writing down Jiku's story and then plans to commit suicide herself.)  Ruth senses the urgency and tries even harder to track down Nao to save her, but, as Oliver points out, years have passed since the diary was written and they can't change any of the events.

Or can they?

A Tale for the Time Being was absolutely amazing.  I borrowed a copy from the library, but I plan to get my own copy since I think it will easily stand up to multiple readings.  The book focused on so many difficult topics like bullying, suicide, and family issues.  The most fascinating part, for me, was that almost all of the characters in the book were more than they appeared and those hidden sides repaired and strengthened family bonds.  And the truly amazing part was the ripple effect that started when Nao bought a book with blank pages and decided to commit suicide but only after she had told her grandmother's story.

Quicksand by Junichiro Tanizaki

I've finally finished my third Junichiro Tanizaki novel (The Makioka Sisters and Naomi were the other two). Mel u over at The Reading Life actually recommended it to me last summer and I completely agree with her review, especially the part about reading everything written by Tanizaki because his writing style is amazing. In fact, one of my goals for 2012 is to read all of his books in the order they were written.

In Quicksand, after her affair with another man, a young married woman, Sonoko, enrolls at "a third-rate private school, with departments for painting, music, sewing, embroidery, and all." He husband, who had studied German law and wanted to be a professor, has just opened a law practice. His reasons for doing this are unclear, though Sonoko suggests that he was ashamed of depending on her parents' support.

At school, Sonoko notices Mitsuko, a very beautiful classmate, and unconsciously models her painting of the Kannon Bodhisattva after Mitsuko, drawing the attention of the school's director and creating rumors about the relationship between the two women, despite the fact that they hadn't met. Mitsuko approaches Sonoko and, after explaining that the rumors are the result of an attempt to discredit her to a potential husband, encourages Sonoko to spend time with her publicly in an effort to "make fun of everyone."

Their friendship quickly becomes a romantic relationship and Sonoko eventually meets Watanuki, the man Mitsuko plans to marry, and Sonoko and Watanuki become both rivals and uneasy allies, which produces, in my opinion, one of the more disturbing scenes in the book. Eventually, Sonoko's husband becomes entangled in the relationship.

Looking back over my reading notes, it's obvious nearly from the beginning that Mitsuko isn't being completely honest. Part of this might come from the summary of the book, which refers to Mitsuko as "a femme fatale as seductive and corrupt as any in the history of fiction, and a deceiver so heartlessly accomplished that she can turn even Sonoko's husband into her accomplice." At first, I was annoyed when I realized that by revealing the Mitsuko's involvement with Sonoko's husband, it spoiled almost 90% of the novel, but since the plot as advancing until the last paragraph, it's not as much of a spoiler as it would seem. Of course, the reader also knows from the beginning that, whatever happens between the three of them, Sonoko's husband is dead by the end of the book.

Sonoko, unlike the narrator of Naomi, is aware of what's happening. In of my favorite quotes, she says:

So I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand, and although I said to myself I had to escape, by this time, I was helpless. I knew I was being used by Mitsuko and that all the while she was calling me her dear sister she was actually making a fool of me.

I suppose it would be more accurate to say she's somewhat aware, much the same as the reader is. Like Sonoko, I started doubting everything Mitsuko said or did fairly early on, assuming that there was a hidden motivation or goal in all her actions. There generally was, but, like Sonoko, I was unprepared for the end of the story. It takes a talented writer to create a situation where the reader questions everything in the narrative, yet is still shocked by the ending.

The book has a lot of the themes I've come to expect from Tanizaki. First, there was the eroticism and obsession, as well as self-destructive love. There was also the feeling of a society on the brink of change and a battle between the traditional and modern. For instance, while Sonoko studies traditional Japanese painting, Mitsuko studies Western painting. A book on Western birth control also plays an important part in the story.

Family also plays a significant role, or, more specifically, the issues springing up from an unequal match and the feeling of obligation to a family. Sonoko's husband's family is apparently below Sonoko's family. Her family supports him, even considering him a good catch because of his academic record, going as far as to take him into the family "like an adopted son" and ensuring that the couple are supported while her husband is studying, but also allowing them to go abroad for two or three years. This apparently leads to friction, with Sonoko saying that her husband found her "too willful" because of her family's position. This leads indirectly to Sonoko's relationship with Mitsuko.

Tanizaki is one of my favorite authors, but while I love reading his books, I hate writing about them because I never feel like I'm doing his work justice. I absolutely loved Quicksand though and wholeheartedly recommend it.

Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki

She was born with dissipation in her veins. It was fated that she'd turn out this way, despite your attempts to rescue her. -Naomi, 199

Now do you see how frightening I can be? -Naomi, 231

I've been on an Asian literature kick lately, due in large part to the East and Southeast Asia Challenge. I checked out a copy of Please Look After Mom and after that, I'll probably branch out for a bit.

Naomi (or Chijin no Ai, A Fool's Love, in Japanese) couldn't be more different from The Makioka Sisters, which makes sense, since they were written at different points in Tanizaki's life and focus on dramatically different subject matter. While The Makioka Sisters was written in the 1940's and focuses on the daily life of an affluent Osakan family in decline, Naomi was written in 1924 and focuses a modern girl in Tokyo. Tanizaki was more progressive in the 1920's, to the point that Naomi, which was a newspaper serialization, was actually pulled from Osaka's Morning News due to controversy over the portrayal of Western style dancing.

The plot of Naomi is relatively straightforward. It seems influenced by The Tale of Genji (an older man attempts to groom a young woman into a perfect wife) and a precursor to Lolita (older man suffers for his obsession with younger woman). Joji, the narrator, meets Naomi when she's 15 and he's 28. She's a hostess at a cafe, the daughter of a family who runs a brothel. In her mother's own words, "We were going to make the child a geisha...but she wasn't interested, and so we were obliged to send her to the cafe. We couldn't just let her go on playing."

Joji is an engineer who lives frugally and enjoys a good reputation at work. In fact, he's known as a gentleman, though he dismisses this by saying "Still a country bumpkin at her, I was awkward with people and had no friends of the opposite sex, which is no doubt what made me a 'gentleman.'" Taking all of this into account, his interest in Naomi, due most to her Western-sounding name and her "Eurasian" features), shouldn't be that surprising.

Joji rejects the idea of a traditional marriage, both because of the complicated nature of Japanese marriage negotiations and because he rejects the trappings of traditional married life. In his words:

The best approach would be to bring a girl like Naomi into my home and patiently watch her grow. Later, if I liked what I saw, I could take her for my wife. This would be quite enough; I wasn't interested in marrying a rich man's daughter or a fine, educated sort of woman.

And so, with the consent of Naomi's family, he brings her to life with him, provides her with English and piano lessons, buys her clothes, and overall takes the steps needed to turn Naomi into the perfect modern wife. Of course, it comes as no surprise that things don't work out according to plan and the Joji suffers for it.

Joji should be an utterly despicable character and, despite the fact that the entire story is told from his point of view, in fact doesn't come off as a particularly sympathetic character. However, neither does Naomi. In spite of everything, Joji comes of as less predatory and more misguided. There's a sense of immaturity and social awkwardness and that, rather than a progressive view, seems to explain his rejection of a traditional marriage. Naomi quickly becomes spoiled and lazy in her new situation and Joji, despite seeing Naomi's negative traits very early, goes along with the everything despite realizing very quickly that Naomi spending more than he earns and that their "fairy-tale house" is quickly become a nightmare, with half-eaten food and dirty underwear everywhere.

The most interesting part of the story, to me, is Joji's lack of self-awareness. His problems with Naomi might have occurred because trying to change another person and turn her into your ideal never works out. However, his attempts to turn Naomi into the perfect sophisticated and respectable wife might have failed because he isn't the urbane gentleman he thinks he is. Naomi easily deceives him not because of some extraordinary power over his, as he wants to believe, but because Joji has already deceived himself.

The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanazaki

This novel has been on my "To Read" (or, more accurately, "To Finish") list for over a year. I picked it up sometime last year and started it, but unfortunately life got in the way and then I mislaid my copy. I recently found a copy at the library and decided to finish it.

To me, the novel is best described as Jane Austen writing in World War II Japan. The novel is set mostly in Osaka and features the Makioka family, a once-prosperous merchant family that is slowly declining. There are four Makioka sisters: Tsuruko, Sachiko, Yukiko, and Taeko, in order of age. Both Tsuruko and Sachiko have married and their husbands were adopted into the Maikoka family. Tsuruko's husband, Tatsuo, is the head of the main house. Though the two youngest daughters should live in the main house, most of their time is spent in the branch house with Sachiko and her husband, Teinosuke. Part of this is due to friction between the youngest daughters and Tatsuo. Yukiko is also extremely fond of Sachiko's daughter, Etsuko, while Taeko is fond of the freedom she is allowed in the branch house, including the ability to make dolls and earn her living.

More than anything, the novel reads like a collection of scenes from domestic life. However, if there is an actual plot, it would most likely be the family's efforts to find a husband for Yukiko, who is already thirty. Their efforts to find a husband for Yukiko have been thwarted both by Yukiko's extreme shyness and the family's difficulty in accepting their current position and their refusal to allow Yukiko to marry a man that doesn't meet their criteria.

Throughout the novel, the sisters not only struggle with their changing positions in life, but also the changes of the world around them. The novel is set between 1936 and 1941, so the world is in a state of flux, due to both social and political events. The sisters all deal with those changes in their own way.

Tsuruko seems to be the most adaptable and the least attached to her past. When her husband is transferred to Tokyo, they leave the family's home in Osaka and take a much smaller home in Tokyo. They seem to be liberated by moving away from Osaka, where they are well-known and where they feel they must keep up appearances. This causes certain friction between Tsuruko and her younger sisters, especially when she tries to demand that the two youngest sisters live in the main house in Tokyo, in accordance with tradition, despite lacking room for them. It also causes problems when the family feels that Tatsuo and Tsuruko are economizing too much in regards to the family.

Sachiko isn't as adaptable as Tsuruko, or at least doesn't have a motive try to adapt. She embraces certain aspects of modern life, but she is overall a traditional Japanese woman. Interestingly enough, she and Teinosuke spend the most time trying to find a husband for Yukiko, despite the fact that the responsibility should fall to the main house.

Yukiko seems to cling the most to the old ways in both dress and mannerisms. She rarely wears Western clothes and her extreme shyness, due to her very sheltered upbringing, puts off several prospective husbands. The original title of the novel is Sasameyuki or Light Snow, and Yukiko's name uses the same character for Yuki. This, combined with the focus of the novel on her marriage attempts, seems to indicated that Yukiko is the main character of the novel, despite the fact that the reader seldom sees the events from her perspective. When reading the novel, Yukiko seems extremely detached to most events and the reader gets the impression that everything would be better if Yukiko were just left alone to live her life.

Taeko is much more modern, both in dress and behavior. As the youngest, she not only remembers the glory days of the family less, but she also has little memory of her mother, who died shortly after her birth. She made the newspaper (and inadvertently dragged Yukiko into them, due to a misprint) because she eloped with the son of another prominent Osaka family. She's focused on owning her way and embracing modern ideals (though she also is interested in tradition Japanese culture) and her behavior not only causes consternation to the family, but may interfere with Yukiko's miai (formal meetings between two prospective marriage partners).

Overall, I loved the novel. It was long and it took me a long time to get through it, despite being a fairly fast reader. I suppose one of the reasons might have been the fact that there were so many foreign concepts, not just because the novel was set in Japan, but also because it took place in Osaka and a lot of the language and culture was Osaka specific. For instance, Taeko, as the youngest daughter, is referred to as Koi-an.

The characters fascinated me, as did their struggles to find their place in a world that most of them seemed ill-equipped for. The Makioka women were raised in a sheltered and privileged environment and taught skills such as calligraphy and traditional dance that would have served them well in previous generations. They were also raised, for the most part, to be retiring, and all of them (except for Taeko) seem to struggle with that for the whole story. The two older sisters find themselves unable to reply to letters they receive, while Yukiko's inability to even talk to potential husbands is almost comical.

Finding a husband for Yukiko is the driving force of the entire story and it also helps to show exactly how poorly the Makioka family generally, and Yukiko specifically, is adapting to the new world. In previous years, she had several proposals even as the Makioka family was declining, yet because her older sisters were unable to accept their new position, they were too choosy and rejected them. Now, the family's standards have relaxed significantly, but they still won't accept the new prospects. This, in turn, places Taeko in a holding pattern and helps contribute to the problems she experiences later.

There's also a significant amount of illness in the book, both real and imagined. In the opening pages of the book, the reader finds that Sachiko, Yukiko, and Taeko are so obsessed with beriberi that they keep syringes full of vitamin B in the house and routinely inject each other. Yukiko's close relationship with Etsuko is partially attributed to the fact that Etsuko was frequently ill and Sachiko was so frail that she was unable to properly nurse her daughter through illnesses without getting sick herself that Yukiko stepped in.

Despite being somewhat ridiculous in clinging to the past at certain points, I found the characters relatable, especially Sachiko and Yukiko. Since most of the story was told from Sachiko's point of view and focused on Yukiko, it makes sense that they were the most sympathetic. The world that Tanizaki described was a very idyllic one and I found it very easy to get lost in, to the point that I was as frustrated at certain characters for ruining it as the sisters were. I regretted the end of the novel, not just because it felt like it left so much of the story untold, but because I would have loved to spend more time in that world. Seeing the novel end was bittersweet also because I knew what would happen in Japan in the coming years and I wanted to see the characters spared that fate.

The novel was also made into a movie which is also available at the library. I plan to pick it up soon to see how the story translated. Based on some of the descriptions in the book, it should be visually impressive.