Cherry Blossom Adventures

At the beginning of December I signed up for the Japanese Literature Challenge organized by Dolce Bellezza and you can read my post about it here (Ok the link for some reason will not work…Go to my Dec 4th post). The aim was to read three books by Japanese authors during December and January. I am happy to say i have now completed the challenge (I actually finished my final book on my return flight to Japan)

The three books I read were

The bells of Nagasaki- Takashi Nagai (Dec)

Snow Country- Kasunari Kawabata (Jan)

Kitchen- Banana Yoshimoto (Jan)

All three books were good and I think I read a good choice because one was N.F, one was more current fiction (well in the last 20 yrs), and an older fiction.

My favourite was definitely Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. It was a short book and it is hard to believe it was written by somebody so young. Most Japanese fiction that I have read has always been a little weird (You just need to look at Murakami`s books!) and this was no different. The book dealt mainly with loss and grief..with the main character losing her grandmother and then the other character losing his transsexual father to murder (so she was now his mother…if that makes sense). It discussed what it felt like to be left alone in the world. I also felt that the translation of this book was really good. Whenever I read translated Japanese fiction I feel that I am probably losing a lot of the meaning….but the person that translated this done an excellent job because I feel I finished the book with the message that you were meant to get from it…I will definitely be picking up another Banana Yoshimoto book soon!

Snow Country by Kasunari Kawabata was a beautiful book about a man that has a love affair with a local geisha in a mountain town (I just read that the town was at the base of the mountains i between Gunma and Niigata). When I finished it my first feeling was that I needed to read it again because I felt I missed something….I will definitely have to re-read it. I felt it a Little hard to follow at times but I think this had a lot to do with the translations….Kawabata is famous for the way in which he writes as it is said to be like poetry and I guess a lot of this was lost in the translation. Geisha in these provincial towns were a lot more like prostitutes than the geisha of big cities (Who are more like entertainers/ hostess`s). That said the scenes described in the book were beautiful. I can`t really comment on much more on this because I still feel as if I need to re-read it. Perhaps I will understand it more next time.

The bells of Nagasaki was a non-fiction book written by a doctor who later died to to radiation poisoning. It is his story of the day the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and the days that followed. I have never been directly involved in war or directly affected by it so the bomb raids and deaths of war that are described by Nagai are sometimes hard for me to comprehend but the way he wrote made it seem like the readers were there with him. My history, especially Japanese history, is not great and reading books such as this that touch on such an important part of Japanese history always make me want to pick up a history book and get cracking. Anybody living in Japan or with an interest in Japanese history should read this book. I have never been to Nagasaki but I went to Hiroshima several years ago and my experiences there will always stay with me.

I am the worst book reviewer ever but thought I should do a wrap-up of the books I read so that others in the challenge can see what I thought of the books! I enjoyed all the books I read for this challenge and would recommend them to anyone. My only note is that if you were to read Snow Country make sure you read it in one or two sittings because I read it in short bursts over several days and I think this is one of the main reasons I had trouble understanding it.

Oh and in other news I have finished 6 or the 60 books I put down for m 888 challenge! Only 56 to go for the rest of the year!!!!

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