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Joyce thought that his voluntary exile from his homeland (Ireland) was a necessary development in his life if he were to become a true artist. I strongly suspect Yoko Tawada holds the same beliefs. Born in Japan, she is a bit of an oddity in Japanese literature in that she currently lives in Germany and has for some time. Despite this, she has still won some major Japanese literary prizes, such as the Gunzo Prize for New Writer’s and the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. Those are what initially drove me to this book. I had seen her various accolades on Wikipedia and noticed that on Amazon “The Bridegroom was a Dog,” the story that won her the Akutagawa prize, currently has an average review rating on Amazon of 1.5 stars, by far the lowest I’ve seen for a book that’s not self published crud. At my library, I was lucky enough to find a collection of two novellas and a short story by her in my local library, and promptly read it.
Wow is all I can say. By the end of the first story, “The Bridegroom was a Dog,” I understood why some people would hate it. It’s the story of an eccentric cram school teacher. One day she tells her students a story about a princess too young to wipe her bottom after going to the bathroom and her maid too lazy to wipe for her. The maid has a dog wipe her bottom clean instead, and tells the girl that one day the dog will marry her, an idea the girl happily takes to heart. A man suddenly appears in the teacher’s life who has a fetish for licking her rectum during private play, and a whole lot of weirdness happens from there.
It felt like none of the characters or plot points, though, were explored enough. The last thirty pages feels too short, and the ending is very abrupt. I suppose it is trying to mimic the ending of the teacher’s tale, but given we never hear what the real ending is because none of the students can remember and instead tell varying accounts and that aside from the dog and the strange man the comparison between characters in the story and in the tale is vague at best, it reads as a lazy attempt at wrapping up a story.
On top of all this, Tawada uses long sentences to string together the narrative, and whether it is hers or the translator’s fault, I’ll never know, but the whole thing sounds really awkward. The other two stories are more Hemingway than Faulkner, so I don’t know if Tawada decided to experiment with her language with this story or if she did change her style, but her language in the other stories is much more powerful.
I once heard that Tawada is a lot like Haruki Murakami, just with the weirdness factor turned up a few notches. After reading her, I can see the similarities, that’s like saying George R. R. Martin and George Orwell are similar because they both write/wrote scifi/fantasy. A more apt comparison would be Kobo Abe, but not even that does a good job at describing Tawada. Her second story, “Missing Heels,” winner of the Gunzo Prize, is fortunately miles ahead of the previous. A mail order bride comes to a strange country to marry a man that never permits himself to be seen with her, and deals with the almost Kaskaesque culture shock she experiences. The ending to this is much better done, and overall was probably my favorite of the bunch. This one, I thought, should have been the winner of the Akutagawa prize; it definitely would not turn so many readers away.
The final story, “The Gotthard Railway,” was by far the shortest, clocking in at a little over 30 pages, compared with the others’ 60. It’s an unsettling story about a woman who goes on a train ride that goes through a long tunnel in a mountain in Switzerland. The narrative talks of her fantasies of being inside things, whether it be a man or an underground lake. Although I do like the second story more, objectively they are both on equal footing.
I still cannot figure out why Tawada won the Akutagawa for “The Bridegroom was a Dog.” It’s an interesting experiment by her, but in the end I think it fails. The collection is worth looking for though on the strength of the other stories, though, and, at only 60 pages, it’s not like reading ‘The Bridegroom was a Dog” would result in lost time. A lot of people in recent years say that Murakami should win the Nobel; even as a fan of his work, I cannot say that he deserves it. If the rest of her work is similar to her second two stories in this collection, then she has a great likelihood, in my opinion, of being the next Japanese literature Nobelist (although she is only Japanese are far as Gao Xingjian was Chinese). And after Le Clezio, it seems like the Swedish committee favorably looks upon those with dual citizenship/extensive traveling. But even without the Nobel’s endorsement, this collection is a must read for anyone with an interest in Japanese literature.
Wow is all I can say. By the end of the first story, “The Bridegroom was a Dog,” I understood why some people would hate it. It’s the story of an eccentric cram school teacher. One day she tells her students a story about a princess too young to wipe her bottom after going to the bathroom and her maid too lazy to wipe for her. The maid has a dog wipe her bottom clean instead, and tells the girl that one day the dog will marry her, an idea the girl happily takes to heart. A man suddenly appears in the teacher’s life who has a fetish for licking her rectum during private play, and a whole lot of weirdness happens from there.
It felt like none of the characters or plot points, though, were explored enough. The last thirty pages feels too short, and the ending is very abrupt. I suppose it is trying to mimic the ending of the teacher’s tale, but given we never hear what the real ending is because none of the students can remember and instead tell varying accounts and that aside from the dog and the strange man the comparison between characters in the story and in the tale is vague at best, it reads as a lazy attempt at wrapping up a story.
On top of all this, Tawada uses long sentences to string together the narrative, and whether it is hers or the translator’s fault, I’ll never know, but the whole thing sounds really awkward. The other two stories are more Hemingway than Faulkner, so I don’t know if Tawada decided to experiment with her language with this story or if she did change her style, but her language in the other stories is much more powerful.
I once heard that Tawada is a lot like Haruki Murakami, just with the weirdness factor turned up a few notches. After reading her, I can see the similarities, that’s like saying George R. R. Martin and George Orwell are similar because they both write/wrote scifi/fantasy. A more apt comparison would be Kobo Abe, but not even that does a good job at describing Tawada. Her second story, “Missing Heels,” winner of the Gunzo Prize, is fortunately miles ahead of the previous. A mail order bride comes to a strange country to marry a man that never permits himself to be seen with her, and deals with the almost Kaskaesque culture shock she experiences. The ending to this is much better done, and overall was probably my favorite of the bunch. This one, I thought, should have been the winner of the Akutagawa prize; it definitely would not turn so many readers away.
The final story, “The Gotthard Railway,” was by far the shortest, clocking in at a little over 30 pages, compared with the others’ 60. It’s an unsettling story about a woman who goes on a train ride that goes through a long tunnel in a mountain in Switzerland. The narrative talks of her fantasies of being inside things, whether it be a man or an underground lake. Although I do like the second story more, objectively they are both on equal footing.
I still cannot figure out why Tawada won the Akutagawa for “The Bridegroom was a Dog.” It’s an interesting experiment by her, but in the end I think it fails. The collection is worth looking for though on the strength of the other stories, though, and, at only 60 pages, it’s not like reading ‘The Bridegroom was a Dog” would result in lost time. A lot of people in recent years say that Murakami should win the Nobel; even as a fan of his work, I cannot say that he deserves it. If the rest of her work is similar to her second two stories in this collection, then she has a great likelihood, in my opinion, of being the next Japanese literature Nobelist (although she is only Japanese are far as Gao Xingjian was Chinese). And after Le Clezio, it seems like the Swedish committee favorably looks upon those with dual citizenship/extensive traveling. But even without the Nobel’s endorsement, this collection is a must read for anyone with an interest in Japanese literature.