'Some Prefer Nettles' by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki (Review)

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki is definitely a writer worthy of my J-Lit Giants series, one of the best-known Japanese authors of the twentieth century.  His most famous novel is possibly The Makioka Sisters, but today's offering, Some Prefer Nettles, would be up there among his best.  As well as being an excellent read, today's choice has one more point (for me) in its favour - once again, we're heading back to the region where I spent my time in Japan...

*****
Some Prefer Nettles (translated by Edward Seidensticker) is set in the Kansai region of Japan, the gritty polar opposite of the cultured Kanto area around Tokyo.  The story is constructed around Kaname and Misako, a married couple who, for a number of years, have been husband and wife in little more than name.  As the unhappy couple attempt to pluck up the courage to sever their ties for good, Kaname starts to regret the effect the divorce will have on his relationship with his father-in-law, Hideo.

Hideo has completely surrendered to the alien Kansai culture and is enjoying his old age in Kyoto, along with a young lover who has taken the place of his dead wife.  O-hisa, a doll-like classical Kyoto beauty, is very different from the Tokyo-bred Misako, but Kaname starts to wonder whether that is really such a bad thing after all.  Like his father-in-law, Kaname begins to see that new is not necessarily better...

Some Prefer Nettles is a short, semi-autobiographical novel with two main focuses.  The first is the problem of working through, or ending, an unhappy marriage.  Kaname lost interest in sex with Misako soon after the start of the marriage, and his inability to feel anything for her has caused her heartbreak - and driven her to take a lover (with Kaname's blessing...).  Yet the hapless husband is still undecided about forcing the issue of a divorce as he's not convinced that love and sex are vital to a happy marriage:

"Who, looking at them now, could know that they were not really husband and wife?  Not even the servants, who saw them every day, seemed yet to have suspected it.  And indeed weren't they husband and wife?  He thought of how she helped him even with his underwear and socks.  Marriage was after all not only a matter of the bedroom.  He had known women enough in his life who ministered to that particular need.  But surely the reality of marriage lay as much in these other small ministrations.  Indeed, he could almost feel that through them marriage was revealing itself in its most basic, its most classical form, and he could think of Misako as an entirely satisfactory wife..."
pp.12-13 (Vintage, 2001)

Anyone who thinks that Kaname is a satisfactory husband though is very wide of the mark.  While he may appear generous and cultured, especially in comparison with his rough-and-ready father-in-law, he is actually an extremely cruel man.  The more the reader learns about his 'marriage', and the more we reflect upon his treatment of Misako, the more loathsome he becomes.  Having lost all sexual desire for his wife, he simply goes on sleeping in the same room as her, listening to her tears night after night for years, virtually forcing her to seek affection in the arms of another man (while he runs off after Eurasian prostitutes...).

If he could only take some initiative and instigate a divorce, he might salvage some dignity.  However, he is unable to actually bring himself to make a decision which may disrupt his comfortable life, shying away from the thought of a scene:

"He was guided by a Tokyo-bred sense of how to comport himself, and with his dislike for the unrestrained Osaka drama, he could only with revulsion see himself as the contorted, weeping principal in a scene from an Osaka melodrama." p.45

As the novel ends, we are no closer to a resolution - which is very in character...

As mentioned above, Tanizaki used this novel to work through some issues in his own life.  He too divorced his wife, virtually passing her on to a close friend.  While this may seem a little off to non-Japanese, he did at least ensure that his wife would be provided for in future, with a new husband he knew and trusted...

The second issue is his own experience with the Kanto - Kansai (Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe) divide.  While some of his characters believe the Tokyo way of life to be more refined and elegant than the mercantile Osaka lifestyle, Kaname gradually comes to see the honesty in the traditional Kansai customs, something which has been lost in the east.  Like Misako, Tokyo is described as having been coated with a layer of refinement and civilisation - albeit, one which only runs so deep...

Some Prefer Nettles is an excellent read, a slow-moving, psychologically-intense work (although if pages of descriptions of puppet shows are not your thing, you may disagree).  In Kaname, Tanizaki has created a 'superfluous hero' worthy of being the successor to Futabatei's Bunzo Utsumi (although he's a little nastier than the hero of Ukigumo).  There is no real ending, and the loose ends remain anything but tied up - but that's the point.  Tanizaki himself said that if you've understood the characters, you'll know how the story ends.  Read it for yourself, and see if you agree :)

A Small Amount of Catching Up - Part 2

Today, I'll be discussing another trio of books in my desperate (and unnecessary) attempt to get back up to date with my blog, reviewing a rare (for me) non-fiction book, a French magical realism novel and yet another slice of Japanese literature - allons-y...

*****

A Short History of Philosophy is a textbook I read a while back, in preparation for helping students studying an Art & Design theory unit at work.  I am no longer working there, so it probably wasn't the best use of my work time, but it was extremely interesting all the same.  Reading about the long line of Western philosophers, starting with the Greek greats (Socrates, Aristotle, Plato) through to Bertrand Russell in the twentieth century was fascinating stuff; however, a month or so after the fact, I'd be hard pressed to remember more than a few names and ideas (which is thoroughly depressing).

One thing I do remember though is my favourite philosopher, Diogenes the Cynic.  Why is he my favourite?  Well, in addition to living on the streets and being fairly dismissive about adhering to the conventions of polite society (and hygiene), he was also responsible for one of the best disses in history.  When Alexander the Great, one of his admirers, came to visit him and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes replied "Yes, you can get out of my daylight."  As well as being extremely profound, it also showed a lot of balls: if the ruler of the known world showed up on my doorstep (or gutter), I think I'd probably be a tad more respectful...

*****

A good while back, I was dropping off some old clothes at the local second-hand shop when I noticed a book in German on the shelf by the counter.  I'd never heard of it, but it was only $1 (and, in pre-Book Depository times, finding anything in German in Melbourne was nothing short of a miracle), so I decided to take it home - where I soon realised that it was actually a German translation of a French novel (which I am now reviewing in English...).

Der Erlkönig (Le Roi des Aulnes or The Alder King, translated from French to German by Hellmut Waller) is a Goncourt Prize-winning novel by French writer Michel Tournier.  The title comes from a Nordic myth, turned into a poem by Goethe, about a fairy king who pursues a man across the moors to steal his child from his grasp.  This story, set just prior to, and then during, World War II, appears to have little to do with the title at first; however, as the story unfolds, the parallels become very clear. 

Abel Tiffauges is a rather unusual person, a clumsy, lonely giant of a man, living in Paris in the late 1930s, who gets into serious trouble with the law after spending more time than he should with some local children.  Set free to join the war effort, he begins a gradual drift eastwards across Europe, firstly as a soldier, then as a prisoner of war and finally as a civillian helper in Germany.  He becomes a collector of creatures, from carrier pigeons to dogs, until finally he achieves his dream and becomes a hunter of children, seeking suitable young boys for a German military school: to the parents in the area, his tall, menacing figure becomes one with the legendary Erlking...

This book is a wonderful example of magical realism, with Tiffauges seeming both larger than life and somewhat apart from it, a spectral observer of the European war.  Tournier draws from a dazzling variety of sources ranging from Greek myths to European fairy tales and introduces real people (such as Hermann Goering) to complete his rich tapestry of a novel.  At the end, we are no wiser as to Tiffauges' fate as he heads deeper into the east, but the journey was definitely worth it.  If you like slightly unusual, magical novels (à la Murakami or Garcia Marquez), Tournier is certainly worth a read - but maybe try him in English (or French) instead!

*****

And finally, we come to my third book today and the companion piece to The Key, also translated by Howard Hibbett, Diary of a Mad Old Man.  As well as having an absolutely superb title, this book is another of Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's looks at the seedy sexual underbelly of polite Japanese society.

This time our protagonist is Utsugi, a prototypical grumpy old man if ever there was one, who attempts to ease the aches and pains of growing older by lusting after Satsuko, his daughter-in-law.  With each diary entry (probably the reason these two Tanizaki works were joined in one volume), the old man's obsession grows, causing trouble for the rest of his long-suffering family; predictably, Satsuko is portrayed as being slightly less than innocent, only too willing to use the old man's attention to serve her own interests.

For the first half of this book, I would have to say that I was a little disappointed.  If The Key was a poor imitation of Quicksand, it appeared that Diary... was going to be a mediocre imitation of The Key.  The plots were similar, the diary format was the same, and the idea of the seductive outsider was beginning to grate.  However, Tanizaki turns it around in the second half, moving the story away from a story of obsession and into a study of the effects of old age, focusing the microscope on Utsugi rather than Satsuko (which comes as a nice change).  When the obligatory twist ending comes, it's actually very different to what's expected, leaving the reader with a satisfyingly melancholy resolution.

All in all, an interesting read, but I think I'll lay off the Tanizaki for a while.  Individually, I'm sure all of his books are a wonderful read; however, having looked at brief descriptions of some of his other famous works (Naomi, Some Prefer Nettles), I get the feeling that I would be experiencing severe déjà vu were I to dive into his novels again in the near future.  Besides, there are so many other Japanese authors whose books I am yet to sample - so little time (sigh!)...

A Small Amount of Catching Up - Part 1

After a horrible bout of RSI and/or nasty neck pain (which made it very painful to both type and read), I am slowly getting back to fairly normal health - yay :)  So, it's time to catch you up with a little of what I have managed to read recently: slowly...

*****
Of course, it's good to start the way you mean to go on, so my first mini-review will be a slating of Henry James' The Wings of the Dove.  Yes, yes, he's very clever, wonderful psychological treatment etc etc, but Henry James is everything that non-readers imagine classic literature to be - impenetrable, over-wordy, meandering and (most importantly) completely up itself.  I've tried with Mr. James, I really have, and there were times where I thought I was glimpsing the good in his writing; however, these few moments of enjoyment were drowned in the sludge of words and lack of momentum.  The story?  Sick rich girl has money, and everyone else wants it (but never actually says it of course).  Apologies to all James fans, but it's three strikes and out for old Henry - I just don't like his style...


*****
Now someone whose style suits me a little better is Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, and after reading the wonderful Quicksand, I immediately snapped up a two-book edition on the Book Depository, the first of which was The Key (translated by Howard Hibbet).  This is a he-says-she-says novel with a difference as it is entirely constructed of extracts from the diaries of a man and his wife.  The extracts show the somewhat perverse turn their marriage takes when the husband decides to spice up their sex life with some rather unorthodox measures.  While both the husband and wife become aware of their spouse's diary, both strongly deny that they would ever actually look inside, thus violating their partner's privacy, but how much can we trust what they are telling us - and who are they really writing their diaries for?


The Key is another wonderful, slow-burning, sexually-charged story, and the idea is an intriguing one.  However, it's not as good as Quicksand and suffers a tad in comparison  The ending is definitely very similar, and it does appear to run out of steam a little, surprising for what is a fairly slim book.  I would also warn potential readers that it does contain a storyline that is actually quite shocking to...  Look, I'm getting onto very dodgy moral ground here, and I don't want to start any kind of cultural debate, so I'll tread lightly and just say that many people will find some of the actions the husband takes ever-so-slightly disturbing.  Let's move on...


*****
Now, I do love a bit of Dostoyevsky, and Devils (translated by the famous Constance Garnett) is a lot more than a bit of Dostoyevsky.  Another rolling epic tale, it depicts events in a small rural town where a group of young anarchists is stirring up the locals, confusing the authorities and preparing for a particularly unspeakable crime.  It's based on a real event, and the novel is every bit as good as some of his more famous works, another wonderful combination of tight plotting, psychological suspense and well-written crucial scenes.

It's funny though that when people talk about Dostoyevsky, it's always as a brooding, masterful writer, someone who writes books to be waded through, akin to walking across a vast river of treacle, yet his books are often a joy to read.  As well as being real page turners, his novels can contain wonderful scenes of humour - yes, Dostoyevsky is funny!  The first part of Devils is especially amusing, culminating in a meeting where about a dozen of the main characters meet under unexpected and confusing circumstances, reminiscent more of Oscar Wilde than Tolstoy.  Of course, with the subject matter being what it is, things do take a turn for the more serious later, but never let it be said that Dostoyevsky neglected the lighter side of the art of literature...

*****
So that's the first of my mini-catch-up pieces; there'll be more to come when I can bring myself to return to the computer.  Forgive the brevity and the shallowness of the reviews - hopefully there's something there to make it all worthwhile :)

Review Post 38 - The more you struggle, the deeper you sink

Earlier this year, I read Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's Kansai classic The Makioka Sisters after recommendations from several bloggers, and while it was an interesting read (especially for someone like me who lived in that region), I found it hard to see what the big deal about Tanizaki was.  It turns out that first impressions can be seriously misleading; I finished reading Quicksand (translated by Howard Hibbett) a few days ago, and it's still buzzing around in my head.  This is a very, very good book.  Before I continue though, I have something to say: while I am not one who shies away from discussing the plot in order to write a review, today's post will discuss more aspects of the plot than is good for people who are planning to read the book soon.  Therefore, if you are one of those people, I would advise you to go away and come back when you've read the book yourself.  Alright?  If you're still here, let's continue.

*****
Quicksand is written in the form of a narration of a chain of events by one of the people involved, young widow Sonoko Kakiuchi, to an author friend (presumably Tanizaki himself).  It begins with a description of how Sonoko becomes friends with a beautiful young woman, Mitsuko Tokumitsu, before going on to relate how Sonoko gradually falls under Mitsuko's spell, falling madly in love with her and plunging into a passionate affair.  Almost before she realises, she is lying to her husband, sneaking off to clandestine rendez-vous and spending hours drinking in Mitsuko's body.  And from there, things get even more complicated.

You see, Mitsuko is the hunter, not the hunted, a cruel Goddess of beauty, and she's not content with just the one prey.  Anyone who gets too close to her becomes fatally attracted to her, moths to a flame, unable (and unwilling) to break free from her spell, to the extent that they are willing to give up their time, their bodies and, eventually, even their free will.  Sonoko gets sucked deeper and deeper into the quicksand of adultery, deception and lust, eventually dragging her poor husband down with her.  In her desperation to cling to Mitsuko's affections, she is prepared to degrade herself, to seek alliances with people she despises, to betray her husband, to prove, beyond doubt, her passion and commitment...

The overriding sensation one has when reading this book is of a highly-charged atmosphere of suspense and sexual tension, a stifling, suffocating, lust-filled embrace, which satisfies while slowly squeezing the air from your lungs.  The more innocent scenes take place in the open air, giving them a sense of freedom and fun; however, many of the more sexually-charged episodes take place indoors, heightening the claustrophobic feeling and slowly turning up the pressure cooker on the characters, forcing them to act in ways they would not normally behave.

It's astounding writing, and although there is nothing in the book which is at all graphic (in fact, very little which is explicitly, not implicitly, stated), Tanizaki pours more eroticism into it than a whole bookshelf of pornographic literature.  There is really only one scene where the reader is allowed a glimpse of the uncontrollable passion which has gripped Sonoko, one in which she tears a sheet away from Mitsuko, unwilling to allow her lover to deny her a view of her naked body.  Another, later, skilfully-drawn scene of seduction, involving a sensual massage, would remind anyone who has read Murakami's Norwegian Wood of a certain bedroom section, where a younger woman seduces her older teacher - I would hazard a guess that Murakami had Tanizaki's novel in mind when writing this scene.

Quicksand was serialised in a magazine from 1928 to 1930, a time when (just to put things into perspective) Virginia Woolf had just written Orlando, a fabulous fictional biography which secretly paid homage to her lesbian lover, and D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover had been completed - and banned.  Of course, Tanizaki's work does not compare to Lawrence's in terms of graphic detail, but it must still have been shocking for people to read at the time.

For me though, the genius of this book lies in the way it is constructed around a tangled web of hearsay and reported opinions.  Sonoko is relating the tale to the author, and she quite often reports what other people told her (or what other people told other people who told her).  At the very start of the book, we are made aware that Sonoko lied to her husband, keeping the secret of an affair from her hapless partner, and this, along with the way the story is constructed, gradually led me to an idea, unsupported by anything I've read about about this book elsewhere.

Is it just me, or is there a sense of The Usual Suspects here: is the whole thing a fabrication?  While conventional wisdom states that Mitsuko is a classic femme fatale, and that she was really in love with Sonoko's husband Kotaro, Sonoko is the only one who survives, so why should we trust her?  Is it not possible that she is the one who has been manipulating the lives of the four main characters and that she poisoned Mitsuko and Kotaro?  I realise that I'm really going out on a limb here, but as we are basically told at the start of the novel that Sonoko is a liar, is it stretching the imagination too far to think that the whole novel may be a fabrication of Sonoko's making?

Probably :)

Whether my hare-brained ideas are right or not, one thing is certain: this is a fantastic book.  I can tell you all right now that Quicksand will be there or there abouts when I choose my favourite book at my end-of-year awards post, and there's a fair chance that it may even claim the number one spot.  It is a seriously good book.  Read it.

Review Post 8 - We Are Family

As mentioned in an earlier post, Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's most famous work, The Makioka Sisters, is set in the Kansai or Kinki region of Japan, the area I lived in for three years around a decade ago. Reading books set in places you know is always a particular pleasure, and this is especially true when the book is one you've wanted to read for a good while.

The story, as you would expect from the English title (the Japanese title translates as a light shower of snow...), relates a few years around the start of World War II in the lives of the Makioka sisters, four scions of a famous Osaka family. Although there are four sisters, the eldest, Tsuruko, is slightly distant from her sisters, and the book focuses on the trials and tribulations of the younger three sisters. Sachiko, married to the admirable Teinosuke, is the focal point. She spends her time attempting to arrange a marriage for the traditional (and shy) Yukiko and worrying about the headstrong, westernised baby of the family, Taeko.

The book is a work of many contrasts. The familiar East-West, Kanto-Kansai rivalries appear, with life in the new capital, Tokyo, contrasted with life in the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe conurbation. Tsuruko's symbolic distance from her sisters is emphasised by her husband's move to the capital, deserting the stuffy old Osaka family seat. There is also a contrast between the epic struggle to find a husband for the incredibly shy Yukiko and the way Katharina Kyrilenko, a Russian emigre living in Japan, sets off for England by herself and is married within months.

The differences between the Japanese way of life and that of the foreigners the Makiokas come into contact with are outlined subtly by Tanizaki, and the relationships are much less black and white than is sometimes the case. Sachiko often compares her family to the German neighbours, the Stolz family, and Taeko's acquaintances, the white Russian Kyrilenkos. While their habits may occasionally seem strange, the comparisons are not always made to the good of the Osaka natives. When it comes to Japanese who have returned from extended trips abroad, however, there is a strong sense of scepticism and prejudice...

This year, I have been influenced in my reading approach by the studies I am doing for my master's degree, Intercultural Communication in this semester, and it is fascinating to read The Makioka Sisters in this light. The picture sketched in the book of elaborate nuptial rituals and the importance of family connections in any possible relationship ties in neatly with the reading I have been doing on Collectivist cultures. I also read each spoken exchange with literal and pragmatic meaning firmly in mind: there were many very interesting exchanges from a socio-linguistic point of view!

It's a very good book, the closest thing I've read so far in Japanese literature to the long Victorian pot-boilers I love, but that's not to say that I was totally convinced. One of the blurbs on the cover claimed that Tanizaki was the greatest Japanese author of the twentieth century, but I would not go that far on the basis of this book. I found the style a little too repetitive on occasion, a string of events recounted one after the other with little variation of pace and tone. Compared to some of the Mishima, for example, that I've read over the past year or so, it all seemed a little dry at times.

Of course, as always with foreign novels in translation, it may not be the author's fault. There were a plethora of typos in my version (always annoying), and I'm not convinced that the translation was all it could have been. I'm not sure when the translation dates from, but I doubt it is that recent; one clue for this was a translator's footnote to explain a Japanese delicacy - sushi...

Those slight quibbles aside though, The Makioka Sisters is well worth reading. Get your sukiyaki ready, pour out some sake and sit down and relax with a very enjoyable novel. As for Tanizaki's greatness, however, I'll reserve judgement until I've read some more of his novels. Now, where's that Akashi-Yaki got to?