The Sound of Waves

The Sound of Waves (1954) by Yukio Mishima is a fairly slim novel that rather surprised me. After reading his Death in Midsummer and Other Stories (1953) and short story "Patriotism" (1960), both dark and philosophical, this one, by comparison, felt refreshingly light and optimistic. I didn't know he had it in him. And while the subject of suicide does come up, as an option in the mind of the young protagonist, [spoiler...] nobody offs themselves or dies in otherwise tragic circumstances, as tends to happen in his other works.

It's basically a boy-meets-girl story. Shinji is coming of age in a fishing village on Uta-jima, a small island in Ise Bay between Japan's prefectures of Mie and Aichi. He and Hatsue, a young woman who has returned to the island after training to be a pearl diver, fall in love but feel compelled to keep their relationship a secret so as not to set off the rumor mill. Alas, the mill eventually grinds into action, leaving the fate of the young lovers fraught with uncertainty.

The prose are quite beautiful and the narrative rolls in like mellow waves, creating a calming effect as you read. Mishima here also shows his talent for describing the sea and nature, and for capturing the essence of village life and young love.

Mishima won the Shincho Prize from Shinchosha Publishing for The Sound of Waves. It has been adapted for film five times (three of these are apparently very hard to track down) as well as a two-part animation.

The Memory Police

The Memory Police, a novel by Yōko Ogawa, was published in 1994 and then translated by Stephen Snyder for its 2019 release in English. This dreamlike, dystopian story unfolds in an enigmatic cloud of allegory. It's set on an isolated island plagued by a gradual extirpation of memories as well as the objects that conjure them. Roses are among the first to go, then birds and calendars, and the island folk themselves seem to fade in ways too. A few retain their memories and so they're hunted down by the Memory Police and disappeared, the exception being those who can remain in hiding.

The unnamed narrator is an author who processes her community's grim reality through the novels she writes, her characters similarly suffering losses that bring on the loss of the self. She hides her memory-capable editor at home, in a secret cubbyhole of a room accessible only through a trapdoor in the floor and by a makeshift funnel speaker. But the Memory Police, fascist and cold as the snow that covers the island ever more deeply, are out there, searching houses, enforcing the disappearances, removing all who remember what might be forever gone.

I quite liked this one for the unsettling calm that runs through it. Ogawa's sentences are simple and clear, contrasting eerily with the plight and horror conveyed through the imagery in her masterly descriptions. I was a bit frustrated midway through by the allegory. I wanted Ogawa or the narrator to explain why these terrible events were happening and what it all actually meant. But by the book's end the allegory is satisfying in its murk, giving us a fictional but much clearer picture of real-world truths—in particular about the importance of remembering and storytelling.

Yōko Ogawa

The Reed Cutter & Captain Shigemoto's Mother

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (July 24, 1886–July 30, 1965) was a master at burrowing right down into the heart of human relationships while describing them with precision and clarity. English translations by Anthony H. Chambers of his short story "The Reed Cutter" (蘆刈, or "Ashikari" in Japanese) and Captain Shigemoto's Mother (少将滋幹の母, or Shōshō Shigemoto no haha), published in 1932 and 1949, respectively, appear in this book which came out in 1993. The narrators for both quote from a number of old poems and other stories. Among the main themes is the transience of life, including our endeavors made out of love and for family, and the consequences of our actions over generations.

I enjoyed reading both, perhaps "The Reed Cutter" more. In Captain Shigemoto's Mother, the narrator digressed too often, which was intentional but made the narration hard to follow at times. What's best about the stories is the imagery, particularly the descriptions of nature and autumn in the first half of "The Reed Cutter" and those of death and rot towards the end of Captain Shigemoto's Mother. Remarkable writing from one of Japan's most revered literary figures.