Red Roofs and Other Stories

Four disparate short stories by one of Japan's greatest writers make up this collection. Written between 1917 and 1926, they're told with a blend of realism and fabulism. And in all four Tanizaki explores from different angles the pursuits and pitfalls of pleasure. The first story, “The Strange Case of Tomoda and Matsunaga,” is similar in a way to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and well crafted. Next is “A Night in Qinhuai,” which seems like a personal essay and takes us on a late-night search for a suitable brothel. Again a craving for the exotic pushes the narrative forward, and it's rather disturbing in its descriptions of dismal endless backstreets and a man's hunger to satiate his desire. Then in “The Magician” things get weird. I like this one for how bizarre and intense it gets, unlike anything I'd read before by the author. The final story, “Red Roofs,” brings the reader back to realism, and it's unique in that it revolves around a woman, whereas most of Tanizaki's works are centered on male characters. The story felt somewhat aimless at the beginning, but it comes together by the end. Felt, too, a bit like Haruki Murakami, or Tanazaki's novel Quicksand. Overall, the collection is great writing with a variety of narrative styles and compelling characters.

Deep River

Shusaku Endo's 1993 novel Deep River (深い河, or Fukai Kawa) follows a group of Japanese tourists on a tour of Buddhist sites in India. Each is searching for some form of spiritual understanding or healing. Isobe lost his wife years before and ruminates on reincarnation. Mitsuko, my favorite character in the novel for her type and how well Endo developed her, is a cynical nurse who believes she's incapable of love, and who mocks the priest Otsu for his devotion to Christianity and its "Onion," the name she feels more comfortable calling its god. Kiguchi seems forever stuck in painful memories of the war and Japanese withdrawal from Burma. While Numada, a writer who seeks salvation from nature, is certain that a myna died in his place so that he could live.

The novel pits a number of themes and philosophies against each other, such as East and West, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity, and egotism and compassion. We're also given a wide array of perspectives, carefully laid out to us as the characters recount their pasts and question who they are. The tour takes place during the final days of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and Endo's rich descriptions of the atmosphere during that time, the Ganges, the religious sites, relics, and gods, as well as various strata of Indian society will leave lasting impressions. He's been called by some the Japanese Graham Greene, and I could see why as I read this book; it's more evident in Deep River than in other Endo novels. Overall, it's an exceptionally well-crafted story that'll make you think about humanity, love, death, devotion, and spiritual paths.

Japanese Fairy Tales

A dragon king, tongue-clipped sparrow, sake-drinking tortoise, vengeful rabbit, pitiful hare, flying paper crane, and luminous beings from the moon... A dreadful goblin hag, Rin Jin the Sea King, the Dragon Queen, the Peach Boy, the ogre of Rashomon, and so on and so forth. Oodles of imagination in this book of twenty-two fairy tales translated into English by Yei Theodora Ozaki. They aren't haunting or creepy-bizarre like Lafcadio Hearn's translations and retellings of old Japanese stories; they're rather fantastic fables and parables replete with rewards of treasures for good deeds done and awful punishments doled out to the mean-spirited and unfilial. They seem more for kids than adults, and yet the language is formal and old-fashioned and the tales lack the thrills young people these days are accustomed to in reading modern fiction. The book was released in 1908 (same collection came out in 1903 under the title The Japanese Fairy Book).

About some Ozakis: Yei Theodora Ozaki's father was one of the first Japanese to receive a Western education. He and Ozaki's mother divorced a few years after they married, and their three children remained in the mother's care. Ozaki moved to Japan as a teenager and lived with her father for a few years. Apparently she would occasionally receive letters intended for an Ozaki unrelated to her. This was the Japanese politician Yukio Ozaki, known as the "father of the Japanese Constitution." Interestingly, the two later married, presumably as a result of mistakenly getting each other's mail and having to sort out the matter via their own correspondence. Yukio Ozaki was locked up at times for his anti-war views and struggled for universal suffrage. He was also mayor of Tokyo when the city gave 3020 cherry tree saplings to Washington, D.C.

Yei Theodora Ozaki