Beauty & Sadness - Yasunari Kawabata

This delicately written novel is mainly about suffering and revenge. It is easy and very enjoyable to read. Yasunari Kawabata's skills as a writer are on full display. The story is a simple one but it is told so well that it becomes entirely convincing. The subtle descriptions of love in its various forms is something that stands out in this novel.

Oki, a successful novelist is re-living the past in his mind's eye as he travels to Kyoto for a meeting with an ex-mistress. At that time, Oroko was 15 years old, almost half that of Oki. She became pregnant, but then the extra-marital affair ended. The baby did not survive the birth and Oroko became bitterly depressed. Suffering rejection and loss, she had moved to Kyoto as a form of escape and eventually became a successful painter. The rare chance meeting with the tormentor of the past inspires feelings of acceptance from Oroko. However, it also inspires feelings of revenge in Keiko, her apprentice.

The story follows the actions of Keiko, as she threatens to punish Oki for his treatment of Oroko. To Keiko, Oroko is more than her teacher or master, and the bond between them could well be described as love. Keiko begins to cause fright in Oroko with talk of her plans for revenge, and is often dissauded from doing anything. Unfortunately, Keiko is determined, perhaps due to her own feelings of isolation in the world, to see the drama of revenge through to the end.

Kawabata illustrates the feelings of his characters with intense conciseness. It follows that the reader easily becomes afiliated somehow to particular characters. It is possible that people's thoughts are very different because of the way that we as individuals relate the drama to the circumstances of our own individual lives. For my part, I read with a sense of dread as the reckless Keiko went about her plan.

Japanese Short Stories - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

This selection addresses the themes that Akutagawa often muses about. The path to happiness is about overcoming one's destiny. The stories vary greatly in scope, from the grotesque and bizarre "Hell Screen" that concerns a cruel master painting and his efforts to depict a perfect replication of Hell only to experience Hell itself in life; through to the light and heart-warming tale of "Tangerines" and a metaphysical dissuasion against self preservation portrayed in "A Spider's Thread". In all the stories, Akutagawa demostrates an almost perfect ability to tell a story. It is a complete pleasure to read his light but piercing prose. Devoid of the unnecessery, these stories have pinpoint precision at bringing the reader to the message that Akutagawa wishes to portray.

Thirst For Love - Yukio Mishima

愛の渇き (ai no kawaki), Mishima's third novel tells the story of Etsuko, a young widow, who is living in the house of her father-in-law, Yakichi. Yakichi develops a fondness for Etsuko, since his own wife had died. Etsuko feels virtual repugnance to the old man, but in equal measure indifferently submits to his advances. It is during the time that Etsuko has moved in to share a room with Yakichi that she develops a fondness and later deep love for the young gardener and servant, Saburo. His obliviousness to her feeling causes her much heartache. The socks that Etsuko buys at the offset of the story are a present for the object of her desire; when he fails to be seen wearing the socks, she falls deeper into despair that her feelings will always go unanswered. The discovery that Miho, the maid, is pregnant, presumably by Saburo, all but shatters her dreams, and fires up the ovens of her jealousy.

The novel has the unmistakable fingerprint of Mishima on it. Sinister images and flashbacks such as the gruesome death of her husband to typhoid at the hospital for infectious diseases and Etsuko's lucid thoughts of selling germ-laden blood to healthy people making them sick so as to provide raison d'etre for the hospital. Etsuko's dark ruminations provides the story with a keen sense of approaching calamity.


Thirst For Blood with sado-mashochistic, erotic and violent passion, ultimately sheds more light on the psyche of Mishima himself. It contains elements that can be found in other novels and thus provides part of the picture that Mishima arguably created of himself for himself.

Kwaidan - Lafcadio Hearn

Kwaidan (Stories and Studies of Strange Things) is a collection of tales by a writer who adopted Japan as his country. Lafcadio Hearn was born in Greece, raised in Ireland and worked in the USA, before moving to Japan in his later years. The stories contained in Kwaidan are generally based on old folktales from Japan but perhaps also China.  Some however, are direct accounts of occurences that Hearn himself witnessed and expanded on in his own style.


Highly imaginative in his story-telling but enfused with an unmistakable Oriental psyche, the stories of Kwaidan are very entertaining. As one might expect with folk lore, every story seems to have some sensitive moral sitting quietly behind it. Sometimes the lesson is very obvious, othertimes it is very obscure. 


The story of Aoyagi is a good example of what would appear strange and almost unimaginable to modern man, particularly modern westerners. It is a story that relates much the historical figure of the good smaurai and a deeper lesson that appears right at the end. A heroic and honorable samurai is on a mission for his lord. He falls in love with a strange girl called Aoyagi whom he meets on his travels. Though various hardships befall the pair, they eventually wed and for five happy years dwell together as husband and wife. Suddenly all of a sudden, she cries out in pain and tells the samurai that she is dying. Though she has the appearance of a human women, her soul and heart are infact the belongings of a tree in a forest. Someone was presently cutting the tree down and she cannot continue to live. The story of Aoyagi represents again the importance of nature to the Japanese people. That people and forests are linked to the point of life and death is clearly illustrated in this short folk tale.

The Setting Sun - Osamu Dazai

The Setting Sun is set in the aftermath of World War Two, in Japan. Kazuko is a member of an aristocratic family that has been severely impoverished by the defeat to the Americans. She and her mother lead an uneventful and solitary existence, as she puts it, of drinking tea, preparing meals and reading in the mountains. Her brother has been missing since the war having been sent to the South Pacific and although her mother has given up hope, Kazuko herself refuses to admit that they will never be reunited.

In fact, they are reunited, and for a brief time, life has returned to normal. The mother is incredibly happy. But it soon becomes clear that Naoji, the brother is dependent of drugs and alcohol. This seems to be a result of the experience of war, but even Naoji himself, claims it started before, during his university years.

Kazuko and Naoji's mother falls ill, and eventually dies, leaving the two siblings alone together. Things go from bad to worse. Naoji had always claimed that a title does not mean refinement and believes his actions are those of someone is better off dead. Accordingly, he takes his own life.

Kazuko, who has become involved with a mediocre writer and conceives a child. It is with this child that Kazuko hopes to give a renewal to her life.

The characters and story of "The Setting Sun" tell the story of the post war era in Japan. Of course it is tragic and sombre. This is not the book to cheer oneself up. However, it is certainly an interesting read. The events echo what may have happened to aristocratic families following the war. Metaphorically, one family serves well for the full scope of Japanese culture. This former empire has been literarly crushed, its culture exposed and humiliated, left to search for some kind of justification for existence. It seems apt that Kazuko's own personal renewal and redemption begins with the conception of her child as it is the case that a defeated nation is paralysed to wait for a new generation. Only through the actions of children can justification be granted to the values that define their lives.

Snakes & Earrings - Hitomi Kanehara

Snakes & Earrings (蛇にピアス hebi ni piasu) was published in 2003 and received the Akutagawa Prize. It had a good reception with the reading public, selling over one million copies, and was made into a film.

The story is centured on the 19 year old Lui. She begins a relationship of Ama, who has a forked tongue. He encourages her curiousity in body modification, and pursuades her to have her tongue pierced. She meets Ama's friend, Shiba, who is a tattoo artist and body-piercer. After having her tongue pierced, Lui returns to Shiba and asks for a tattoo. Shiba's price is sex. From then on, the story revolves around the love triangle, and Lui's growing dependence on alchohol.

Snakes & Earrings shines a light into the dark undercultures that are secretly thriving in modern Japan. It is not a complicated story and easy to follow. The thoughts of Lui are vivid, as she slowly evolves as a character to her own point of no return. Well worth reading if you want to see a darker, more psychotic side of Japan.

The Woman in the Dunes - Kobo Abe

The Woman in the Dunes (沙の女 suna no onna） is an existential novel as it deals with a man's ability to give value to his life and the world he finds himself. The man, a teacher from a big city is on holiday, insect collecting. However, when he misses the last bus home, he must spend one night in a desert village. He descends into a sand pit where a woman in a decrepit hut waits to attend him. The following morning it becomes increasingly clear to him that he has become a prisoner. With no ladder there is no clear means of exit.

Initially, he simply cannot understand; he sees his situation as some mistake. Growing more angry, he claims that he will be missed, that people from the city will come looking for him, insinuating he is the victim of some terrible crime. Finally, he attempts to climb out of the sand hole, but to no avail; he is completely trapped by nothing more than tiny particles of sand.

The man is made to work. He must shift the sand, so as to protect the hut. He deems this job's only use is to maintain his own prison, and says it would better to let the house be eaten by the desert. To start with he refuses, but as a result he is denied fresh water, food, alchohol and cigarettes. He tries to reason with his captors, to explain that everything is unnecessery, that he knows better ways, but they are not interested. At the point of dehydration he realises he has no choice.

The story acts primarily to illustrate that modernity is a collective thing. People can go about their lives in collaboration with others. When the man is denied the collaboration he enters a more primevil state of living. In the man's case, it is dig or die. The story captures the essence of the individual in the modern world because although we have our individuality, it exists only by consequence of interactions with other people. We do not live truly individual existences because we rely on others, and consequently we do not find ourselves in such a black and white, do or die situation.

In the end, the man becomes acquiesed to his situation, and tries to better his existence within the boundaries of the sand. This is a colourful way of expressing how we as individuals must sacrafice our individuality in order to preserve our lives. We must dig even though we would rather not.

His keepers, most obviously the woman herself, represent society as a whole. The man cannot shirk his responsibilities to society and simply do as he pleases; there is work to be done. The woman's has totally accepted her fate and position in the world. It is she who understands that in the reality of the world she has certain functions she must carry out in order to survive. She acts as attendant, partner and lover to the man. The man futily attempts to show his strength and power to his captors when he tries to forcefully have sex with her. She resists however, showing that the man cannot simply will this to occur, he must co-operate. Thw woman tells the man that she has lost her family to the sand, illustrating the dangers that exist in a world of obligation.

"The Woman in the Dunes" is a classic piece of existential literature that stands alongside the work of the original existentialists, such as Sartre. It is a powerful example of the workings of the modern world we live.