Japanese Notebooks

Igort’s offbeat graphic memoir feels haphazard in its arrangement, but as “notebooks” of reminiscences of his years in Tokyo, and reflections on the artists, aesthetics and customs that stirred him as a mangaka in his early 30s, this works well as a surreal series of digressive flashbacks and associations. I really enjoyed the bits about his life in the Sendagi neighborhood of Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, in the 90s, since I was living just south of him in Bunkyo’s Sengoku area, where small printing factories used to churn out manga and all kinds of other material. I like the quirkiness of this book too, and it gave me plenty to ponder.

The Dandelion

It’s impossible to trust any text that’s incomplete, and Kawabata’s novel The Dandelion (also Dandelions, Tanpopo) was published posthumously and unfinished (in 1972). An editor’s mindset kicked in while reading this (an exercise in itself), and I wonder if the author might have scrapped this ragged story if he’d lived longer. Polishing it would’ve done away with the repetition and inconsistency, but the whole thing doesn’t feel like it could be ironed out into anything on par with Kawabata’s other novels. Kafka died before finishing The Castle, but reading that you get a clear idea of where he was going with it. The Dandelion, on the other hand, comes across as half-baked.

Kawabata possibly realized it was a dud… There’s an exchange in the last few pages that starts with Ineko’s mother bringing up the phrase tōne no sasu kane—a bell with a distant ring. She says, “It’s a nice way to describe the sound of an old bell, don’t you think?” To which Ineko’s lover replies, “A distant ring. Yes, that’s nice, and you could say that about this conversation, too.” The book up to this point has mostly been this conversation, long and wandering, between the two. The mother, channeling Kawabata, I imagine, comes back with, “Don’t be ridiculous—not this random chatter.”

I agree.

There are some wonderful Kawabata-ish descriptions and sentences here, though. These make it worthwhile to read, but its lack of cohesion and rather stagnant plot make it unenjoyable overall.

Souls on the Road

Souls on the Road (Rojō no Reikon), directed by Minoru Murata and released in 1921, is one of Japan’s best remembered silent films and considered among the first steps towards a distinctly Japanese cinematic culture.

When his career as a violinist ends in disgrace as he collapses on stage in the capital, Koichiro returns to his mountain village on foot with his wife and daughter. At a crossroads in a snowy forest on the way, they're accosted by a pair of recently released convicts. The men, one lame and the other tubercular, both dejected and desperate, attempt to rob the weary family, but seeing how badly in shape they are offer them a chunk of bread instead, before limping off in another direction.

Koichiro arrives at the village on Christmas Eve but is soon rejected by his father. The ex-cons are discovered by the master of another house who, presumably, has caught them trying to sneak inside someplace to escape the winter storm that's coming. At rifle point, he forces the men to take turns beating each other with a switch.

The violinist’s daughter has a fever, but Koichiro's father shows no mercy, kicking the lot of them out into the inclement weather. They shelter in a barn while a boisterous party kicks off in a house that has been quite immoderately decorated for Christmas. The joy of the revelers, streamers hanging around their heads as they dance, is shown in stark contrast to the misery of the now febrile and fading wife and daughter, whose heads appear wreathed by strands of cold, limp hay.

Towards the end, a young boy and girl, the former loyal and hardworking throughout the film and the latter naïvely self-indulgent and frivolous, come to a spot in the woods where a body has been found in the snow. For a fleeting moment the character of each—both static up until then—is interrupted by a pondering of what if's. What if the master of the house had shown mercy? What if the father had shown compassion? A Maxim Gorky quote about compassion and missed opportunity follows to end the film.

Souls on the Road is visually compelling in its storytelling and in the emotions of characters, the rural setting and way of life, and the mix of traditional and foreign clothing. We can see the frenzy of the storm and ghostlike visions which fade in and out and, surprisingly, Santa Claus as well. Laced with sentimentality but not gushing with it, as Japanese films tend to do, Murata gives us a fairly straight telling of the shepherd’s lost sheep, here the prodigal son and the marginalized, and dips it in the inhumanity of the unmerciful and those who turn a blind eye.

Santa Claus appearance in Souls on the Road (1921)