Clouds above the Hill (originally published as 坂の上の雲Saka no Ue no Kumo) is one of the best-selling novels ever in Japan. It spans four volumes. An epic portrait of Japan in crisis, it combines graphic military history and highly readable fiction to depict an aspiring nation modernizing at breakneck speed. Best-selling author Shiba Ryōtarō devoted an entire decade of his life to this extraordinary blockbuster, which features Japan’s emerging onto the world stage by the early years of the twentieth century.
Volume I describes the growth of Japan’s fledgling Meiji state, a major “character” in the novel. We are also introduced to our three heroes, born into obscurity, the brothers Akiyama Yoshifuru and Akiyama Saneyuki, who will go on to play important roles in the Japanese Army and Navy, and the poet Masaoka Shiki, who will spend much of his short life trying to establish the haiku as a respected poetic form.
In Volume II, Meiji Japan is on a collision course with Russia, as Russian troops stationed in Manchuria ignore repeated calls to withdraw. Admiral Tōgō leads a blockade and subsequent skirmish at the strategically vital and heavily fortified Port Arthur, whilst Yoshifuru’s cavalry in Manchuria maneuvers for position as it approaches the Russian Army lines. The two armies clash at the battle of Liaoyang, where Japan seals a victory which shocks the world.
Volume III finds Admiral Tōgō continuing his blockade of Port Arthur. Meanwhile, a Japanese land offensive gains control of the high ground overlooking the bay as the Russians at last call for a ceasefire. However, on the banks of the Shaho River, the Japanese lines are stretched, but the Russian General Kuropatkin makes a decision to flank the troops to the left and in doing so encounters Akiyama Yoshifuru’s cavalry.
Volume IV begins with the dramatic battle of Mukden where Akiyama Yoshifuru’s cavalry play a major part in the action against the Cossacks. Meanwhile, Admiral Tōgō’s fleet sail to the Tsushima strait to intercept the Baltic Fleet en route to Vladivostok. With the help of Akiyama Saneyuki’s strategies, the Baltic Fleet is totally destroyed and the Japanese fleet make a triumphant return to Yokohama.
Anyone curious as to how the “tiny, rising nation of Japan” was able to fight so fiercely for its survival should look no further. Clouds above the Hill is an exciting, human portrait of a modernizing nation that goes to war and thereby stakes its very existence on a desperate bid for glory in East Asia.
About the Author: Shiba Ryōtarō (司馬 遼太郎 1923-1996) is one of Japan’s best-known writers, famous for his direct tone and insightful portrayals of historic personalities and events. He was drafted into the Japanese Army, served in the Second World War, and subsequently worked for the newspaper Sankei Shimbun. He is most famous for his numerous works of historical fiction. Ryōma! is one of Shiba’s masterworks and has been immensely popular since its publication in 1966.
Translators: Juliet Winters Carpenter, Andrew Cobbing and Paul McCarthy.
Juliet Winters Carpenter is a professor of English literature at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts and one of the foremost translators of Japanese literature working today. Her translations include Kobo Abe’s “Beyond the Curve,” Fumiko Enchi’s “Masks,” Ryotaro Shiba’s “The Last Shogun,” Jun’ichi Watanabe’s “A Lost Paradise,” and Machi Tawara’s “Salad Anniversary.” See Hon Podcast 03: Juliet Winters Carpenter Talks About Translating Japanese Literature.
Originally published as 半島を出よHantō o Deyo in 2005 was awarded the 59th Mainichi Publishing Culture Award and the 58th Noma Literary Prize in 2005.
From the Fatherland, with Love is set in an alternative, dystopian present in which the dollar has collapsed and Japan’s economy has fallen along with it. The North Korean government, sensing an opportunity, sends a fleet of ‘rebels’ in the first land invasion that Japan has ever faced. Japan can’t cope with the surprise onslaught of ‘Operation From the Fatherland, with Love’. But the terrorist Ishihara and his band of renegade youths – once dedicated to upsetting the Japanese government – turn their deadly attention to the North Korean threat. They will not allow Fukuoka to fall without a fight. Epic in scale, From the Fatherland, with Love is laced throughout with Murakami’s characteristically savage violence. It’s both a satisfying thriller and a completely mad, over-the-top novel like few others.
(Note: this book has two different covers, depending on the edition)
Excerpt:
A MISSED SIGN
March 3, 2011
Tokyo
SUZUKI NORIKAZU flinched at the cold air outside the exit to Kasumigaseki subway station. Feeling the chill on his neck, he
sneezed as he set off down the road. The government district was thronged with demonstrators, from right-wingers in their campaign trucks to civil-rights groups and labor unionists, all yelling through bullhorns, vying with one another to be heard. Awfully cold for March, Suzuki thought to himself. He felt like joining in the shouting.
He hadn’t been getting enough sleep lately and could feel himself coming down with a cold. He should have worn a muffler.
That morning he’d sent his thirteen-year-old daughter a bouquet of flowers complete with a free hina doll via an Internet florist. She had remained with his ex-wife after the divorce five years ago, and Suzuki had resolved to send her flowers every year on her birthday. Ever since elementary school she had grumbled about it being on March 3, coinciding with the Doll Festival held for Girls’ Day, which meant she had to make do with one celebration instead of two. Each time he sent the flowers, he was reminded that it was already March and spring had almost arrived. Over the years the connection had become fixed in his mind, and although the weather forecast that morning had warned that the temperature was ten degrees lowerthan normal for the time of year, he’d left home without a scarf.
Suzuki worked in the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, commonly known as CIRO. For the past few years they had been steadily cutting back on staff, suspending new recruitment, and transferring some existing personnel, so that by last April the workforce had shrunk from more than a hundred and fifty to fewer than a hundred and twenty. Taking time off work for a cold now would merely add to the flak already being directed at employees like himself who had come from the private sector. All the ministries and government offices in Kasumigaseki were being restructured, not just the Cabinet Office and the Home Affairs Ministry. Whenever he got together with colleagues, the conversation would always turn
gloomily to rumors of the retirement fund drying up within five years.
Hunching against the wind, he joined the swarm making its way toward the various government buildings. On opposite sides of the road outside the Cabinet Office, right-wingers and labor unionists were trying to outshout each other in their tirades against the government and bureaucrats. The rightists were calling for Japan to arm itself with nuclear weapons and revive the military draft, so that it could stop kowtowing to America and China and become a truly sovereign nation. The unions, meanwhile, howled that adhering to Article Nine of the Constitution was essential to maintain peace and protect jobs. Both sides, however, were united in their hatred of the present administration.
The herd of civil servants, Suzuki among them, scurried along to their various offices, trying to ignore the blaring loudspeakers. For a number of years the economy had been in sharp decline, leading to an unprecedented recession coupled with inflation. As a last resort bank accounts had been frozen to save the financial system, but this had devastated the money markets. A regulated economy was anathema to foreign investors, and they had abandoned the Japanese market in droves. Businesses had undergone ruthless downsizing in an attempt to survive, and the number of suicides among middleaged and senior citizens had almost doubled. It wasn’t only the rightists and labor unions that loathed the bureaucrats, whose jobs and monthly salaries were secure.
“Good morning,” Suzuki greeted the security guard at the entrance to the Ministry, sneezing again as he showed his pass.
“You all right, sir?” asked the elderly guard, his familiar face creasing in a concerned smile. “I always use these meself,” he added, pulling out several pocket warmers from his jacket. “With those guys around, it somehow feels a whole lot colder.” Behind him was an armored vehicle and several Self-Defense Force soldiers in combat gear. The thick steel panels of the heavy camouflaged truck really did seem to emanate a chill. Following the freeze on bank deposits, Molotov cocktails had been thrown at the Ministry of Finance, a bomb was planted in the Prime Minister’s official residence, and last summer there had been an Islamic fundamentalist-style suicide bombing outside the National Diet building. The explosion hadn’t been large enough to cause a major tragedy, but it had led to emergency legislation allowing deployment of the SDF to guard the Diet, government offices, and other key facilities such as nuclear power stations.
The Self-Defense Force was isolated in its relations with East Asia and the wider international community, and even its dealings with US forces stationed in Japan had soured. The freeze on bank accounts had been precipitated by the pensions crisis as the baby-boomer generation of civil servants began reaching retirement age. Local government bonds together with investment and loan bonds had gone into free fall, and interest rates on national bonds had shot up. Inflation and recession hit at the same time, anxiety and discontent spiraled, and resentment simmered nationwide. In order to stay in
power, last year the government had tilted toward expanding the military, provoking strong warnings and opposition from America and Europe as well as China, Russia, and South Korea. Many who had lost their life savings, and the politicians who depended on their support, were in favor of amending the Constitution to allow a military build-up and nuclear armament as a means of salvaging national pride. This faction held sway despite calls for international cooperation from financial circles and liberal politicians. The more isolated Japan became, the more people disillusioned by financial hardship were drawn to a hardline point of view.
For the past five years, the United States had been redeploying its overseas armed forces, and the number of its troops based in Japan had already been halved. The financial and trade deficits had ballooned under the War on Terror, causing the dollar to plummet and effectively ending American global hegemony. The new administration formed by the Democrats sought more collaborative ties with Europe, China, and Russia. It joined China and Russia in expressing grave concern over Japan’s nuclear armament, and hinted at revoking the Japan-US Security Treaty while also indicating its willingness to end the embargo on weapons sales to China and abandon the Japan-US joint missile defense system. It then announced a hike in the price of feed grain to Japan, which was still reeling from depleted foreign reserves due to the drop in value of the yen. This was taken to mean that America would not give any aid to Japan in the event of food or energy crises—which were in fact already happening. This sudden U-turn provoked indignation even among the most pro-American politicians and media, and Japan-US relations cooled almost overnight. The reality was, however, that the US had been unable for some time now to maintain its position as the world’s single economic and military superpower, and it had effectively given up its role as the world’s policeman. It was also pushing for collective-security agreements in East Asia between China, South Korea, and Japan, and even North Korea and Russia, but in Japan this was misinterpreted by the media and a large portion of the population, who felt that they’d been abandoned. Politicians found themselves unable to check the rising tide of anti-Americanism.
The SDF soldiers stood with their Type 89 assault rifles at the ready, making no attempt at eye contact with the stream of employees entering the building. It was as if they were cut-outs. Suzuki had come to recognize some of them, but they never responded to his greetings. Soon after they’d been deployed, he had tried asking one young soldier, who remained standing motionless in the same spot every morning for hours, where he went for lunch. The soldier hadn’t answered—hadn’t even looked at him. There was strong opposition amongst employees to being guarded by the SDF, and
many in the mass media were also critical. Suzuki thought that some minimal communication might help matters. They didn’t need to go so far as sharing a joke or anything, but as it was the soldiers were just too unnaturally distant from those they were guarding. If a terrorist attack did happen, some level of cooperation would be necessary; establishing some basic connection from the start would make things easier.
On reflection, though, it wasn’t just the relationship between the SDF guards and employees that was unnatural. Even politicians and bureaucrats in the various ministries and agencies, not to mention in CIRO itself, seemed incapable of maintaining normal civility and communicating appropriately among themselves. It wasn’t that they were openly hostile to one another, but their relationships tended to be either generally uncooperative or artificially chummy…..
About the Author: Ryū Murakami (村上 龍) was born in Nagasaki, Japan in 1952. His novels explore human nature through themes of disillusion, drug use, surrealism, murder and war, set against the dark backdrop of Japan. His best known novels are Almost Transparent Blue, Coin Locker Babies and In the Miso Soup.
About the Translators: This is a cotranslation with Ginny Tapley Takemori, Ralph McCarthy and Charles de Wolf. Ginny Tapley Takemori lives in rural Japan and has translated fiction by more than a dozen early modern and contemporary Japanese writers, from bestsellers Ryu Murakami and Kyotaro Nishimura to literary greats Izumi Kyoka and Okamoto Kido. Her most recent book publications include Miyuki Miyabe’s five-volume Puppet Master and Tomiko Inui’s The Secret of the Blue Glass, shortlisted for the Marsh Award, and her short fiction translations have appeared in Granta, Freeman’s, Words Without Borders, and a number of anthologies. Her translation of Sayaka Murata’s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel Convenience Store Woman was published in June 2018 to great acclaim. Her translation of Kyoko Nakajima’s The Little House is forthcoming in 2019. Read the BOA interview: Ginny Tapley Takemori on Translating Convenience Store Woman.
The bizarrely erotic and comic adventures of a man searching for his missing wife in a mysteriously vast underground hospital.
Excerpt from Chapter 1, introducing the main character:
Thin at first glance, but muscular. Wears contact lenses for mild nearsightedness in both eyes. Slightly frizzy hair. Inconspicuous scar at left corner of mouth (from a quarrel during student days, although the subject is extremely mild-tempered). Smokes under ten cigarettes daily. Special talent is roller skating. Has worked temporarily as male nude model. Currently employed at Subaru Sporting Goods Store. Director of sales promotion for jump shoes (sporting shoes with special elastic body—bubble Springs—built into soles). Hobby is tinkering with machines. In sixth grade, won a bronze medal in newspaper-sponsored inventor contest….
About the Author: Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo in 1924, grew up in Manchuria, and returned to Japan in his early twenties. In 1948 he received a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University, but he never practiced medicine. Before his death in 1993, Abe was considered Japan’s foremost living novelist, and was also widely known as a dramatist. His novels have earned many literary awards and prizes, and have all been bestsellers in Japan. They include The Woman in the Dunes, Secret Rendezvous, Kangaroo Notebook, The Ark Sakura, The Face of Another, The Box Man, Inter Ice Age 4, and The Ruined Map.
About the Translator: Juliet Winters Carpenter is a professor of English literature at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts and one of the foremost translators of Japanese literature working today. Her translations include Kobo Abe’s “Beyond the Curve,” Fumiko Enchi’s “Masks,” Ryotaro Shiba’s “The Last Shogun,” Jun’ichi Watanabe’s “A Lost Paradise,” and Machi Tawara’s “Salad Anniversary.” See Hon Podcast 03: Juliet Winters Carpenter Talks About Translating Japanese Literature.
Winner of Japan’s prestigious Yomiuri Literature Prize.
From the Preface by Minae Mizumura:
To be a novelist by occupation or a novelist by calling — these are two different things.
In the course of our lives, we are asked to fill out a surprising number of forms: embarkation and disembarkation cards, DVD rental membership applications, requests for credit cards. These forms typically come with blank lines on which one is expected to write one’s “Name,” “Date of birth, ” “Address” — and “Occupation.” Faced with the line marked “Occupation,” I always hesitate. Obviously, I can easily write down “novelist,” but the word “Occupation” reminds me that I have published only two novels so far and that the royalties aren’t enough for me to make ends meet. As I scribble “Self–employed” in the blank space — embarrassed by my handwriting, which is a mess, not that anybody cares nowadays — I wonder if I’ll ever be able to claim to be a “novelist” with a clear conscience. I can only imagine how gratifying it would be if I could actually earn my living writing novels.
But such ambition merely concerns “occupation” — the business side of writing. It is fundamentally no different from that of, say, someone opening a small laundry downtown, worried about the future of his fledgling business. Anyone who somehow has to make a living shares this worry, yet for people who write novels it isn’t what matters most; in their case, one “calling” matters more.
Let’s say in ten years time I have written numerous novels and I’m doing quite well for myself. I doubt the day will ever come, but let’s just suppose that it does. Would I then be satisfied? No, I don’t think so. Most likely, I would still want to know if it was my mission on earth to become a novelist. However prosaic a writer’s work or person may be, a writer is also an artist, and every artist must ask himself whether he was born to do what he does, rather than whether he can live by doing it. Behind the perennial — indeed obsessive — need to believe that in some mysterious way one is destined to be an artist. A novelist is particularly prone to this concern. To become a painter, a dancer, or a musician, two things are necessary: an apparent gift and hard training. In contrast, nothing seems easier than becoming a writer. Anyone can string a few sentences together and turn out a novel practically overnight. Who becomes a novelist and who does not seems almost arbitrary. Hence the strong desire to hear every sounding voice from on high telling one that one was indeed destined to write.
A miracle happened to me two years ago.
It was when I was staying in Palo Alto in north in northern California, writing my third novel, or, more precisely, trying to write it. I lacked confidence, and progress was slow. Then, out of the blue, I was made a gift of a story, “a story just like a novel.” It concerned a man whom I knew, or rather whom my family knew, in New York at one time. This was no ordinary man. Leaving Japan with nothing, he arrived in the United States and made a fortune there, literally realizing the American dream. His life had taken on the status of legend among Japanese communities in New York — yet no one knew that he had had another life back in Japan, one marked by the poverty-stricken period that followed World War II. The tale of that life would almost certainly have disappeared, lost in the stream of time, if a young Japanese man who happened to hear it had not then crossed the Pacific and hand-delivered it to me in Palo Alto, like a precious offering. Of course the preciousness of his offering was something the young man never knew. As far as he could tell, he merely traveled on his own initiative, sought me out of his own accord, then went away when he told the story he wanted to tell. Yet I felt as if some invisible power had arranged to bring this messenger to me.
He took all night to tell me the story. Outside, the heaviest rainstorm in California for decades raged, trapping us in the house. The angry power of nature must have affected my nerves: when he had finished, I was in shock. It felt uncanny that I should have known someone who had lived such a life — and that, by a strange series of coincidences, his tale should have been delivered to me, and me alone.
It felt like a voice from on high.
The real problems started afterward. My doubts about my “calling” had been delayed, only to be replaced by the difficulties inherent in writing a modern novel in Japanese based on the story I’ve been given. For reasons that will become apparent later, the initial elation that accompanied what came almost as a revelation and did not last. As I went on writing, I felt daunted, afraid that this novel was something I shouldn’t be writing after all, and half convinced that the attempt would fail. But once the novel started to take shape, I came to realize none of this mattered; that what I would leave behind was only a small boat on a vast ocean of literature. And with this realization I reached the point where I felt at ease with my work.
If this novel finds any readers, I shall feel blessed.
About the Author:Minae Mizumura is one of the most important novelists writing in Japan today. Born in Tokyo, she moved with her family to Long Island, New York, when she was twelve. She studied French literature at Yale College and Yale Graduate School. Her other novels include Zoku meian (Light and Dark Continued), a sequel to the unfinished classic Light and Dark by Natsume Soseki, and Shishosetsu from left to right (An I-Novel from Left to Right), an autobiographical work. She lives in Tokyo.
About the Translator: Juliet Winters Carpenter is a professor of English literature at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts and one of the foremost translators of Japanese literature working today. Her translations include Kobo Abe’s “Beyond the Curve,” Fumiko Enchi’s “Masks,” Ryotaro Shiba’s “The Last Shogun,” Jun’ichi Watanabe’s “A Lost Paradise,” and Machi Tawara’s “Salad Anniversary.” See Hon Podcast 03: Juliet Winters Carpenter Talks About Translating Japanese Literature.
Note: This book is only available as an ebook and only on Amazon US.
“Ryouma!” is the translation of Ryōma ga yuku and tells the life story of Sakamoto Ryōma, a samurai and one of the great figures in the turmoil that engulfed Japan in the years before the 1868 Meiji Restoration. The novel is a masterwork by the prolific historical novelist Shiba Ryōtarō and has sold more than 24 million copies in Japan since publication in 1966—and still counting!
Excerpt from the Introduction by Henry D. Smith II:
Sakamoto Ryōma (1836-1867) was an intriguing figure in the turbulent years of crisis from 1853, when United States Commodore Matthew Perry came to demand trade relations with Japan, until the 1968 collapse of the Tokugawa military government and the return to direct imperial rule in the Meiji Restoration. Ryōma’s life was cut short by assassins in Kyoto in 1867, so his direct impact on the creation of the new government just weeks later was limited. In the century and a half since his death, however, various retellings of his life have made him far more influential in the minds of the Japanese people then if he had survived into the Meiji era. Of those retellings, none has been more important and more durable than Ryōma ga yuku, Shiba Ryōtarō’s great novel of 1962 – 1965, which appeared about a century after Ryōma’s death. It has never gone out of print in Japan, but only now, another half-century later, has it at last appeared in English in this fine translation.
It is important to grasp the critical dynamics. One was international, since Japan was suddenly faced with an unprecedented military and technological threat in the form of heavy armed steamships. Perry’s arrival is often described as an “opening” of Japan, a nation stereotypically depicted as enclosed in a state of “self-imposed isolation.” The description of Ryōma ga yuku in the English Wikipedia entry for “Shiba Ryōtarō,” for example, it asserts that “Japan banned international trade for over 200 years and isolated itself from the rest of the world.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The Japanese did not ban international trade, but rather restricted it to the Dutch and, more importantly, the Chinese, both of whom provided Japan with constant and broad access to trade objects and information from throughout the world. To be sure, the Tokugawa state carefully controlled foreign relations in the interests of internal stability, most notably by prohibiting Japanese citizens from traveling abroad. But as becomes clear in Ryōma ga yuku, Japanese at the time were well-informed about the rest of the world — and very curious to know more.
It was the precise military nature of the threat posed by the West that triggered the years of crisis, not the opening to international trade. Trade issues would indeed become critical, not because of the trade itself, but because Japan was denied control over its own trade by the unique “unequal treaties” that the West imposed first on China, then on Japan, resulting in economic disruptions that worked only to heighten the mounting internal political crisis. That crisis is the crucial story of the era, forcing the shogunate it to take measures to deal with the West. These measures in turn fomented anti-foreign sentiment, which was channeled into a demand to topple the Tokugawa regime and replace it with direct imperial rule; all of which was capitalized in the slogan “Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians” (sonnō jōi). This complex dynamic, as readers quickly discover, provides the crucial context for Ryōma’s life.
About the Author: Shiba Ryōtarō (司馬 遼太郎 1923-1996) is one of Japan’s best-known writers, famous for his direct tone and insightful portrayals of historic personalities and events. He was drafted into the Japanese Army, served in the Second World War, and subsequently worked for the newspaper Sankei Shimbun. He is most famous for his numerous works of historical fiction. Ryōma! is one of Shiba’s masterworks and has been immensely popular since its publication in 1966.
About the Translators: Translated by Paul McCarthy and Juliet Winters Carpenter.
Juliet Winters Carpenter is a professor of English literature at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts and one of the foremost translators of Japanese literature working today. Her translations include Kobo Abe’s “Beyond the Curve,” Fumiko Enchi’s “Masks,” Ryotaro Shiba’s “The Last Shogun,” Jun’ichi Watanabe’s “A Lost Paradise,” and Machi Tawara’s “Salad Anniversary.” See Hon Podcast 03: Juliet Winters Carpenter Talks About Translating Japanese Literature.
The Secret of the Blue Glass by Tomiko Inui was shortlisted for the Marsh Award.
In my own special place there is no little prince from a distant star, nor a pleasant river bank from where sounds the clear strains of Pan’s pipes. My special place is the house in Tokyo where I was born and grew up, which was destroyed in an air raid during the war. I can still recall how, when I joined the mass evacuation of primary school children leaving for the countryside, I kept looking back at it longingly over my shoulder as I was led away. No trace remains of that house now, nor of the house in the shade of the big Zelkova tree next door. And I’ll probably never again get to meet that little imp of a girl who lives there.
Or so I believed for ten years, until one day I ran into an old friend by chance on the train and he happened to mention her to me. “She still remembers you, you know,” she said. “She sometimes wishes she could meet up with that boy next-door who was so good at the high bar. She sounded really quite wistful.”….
About the Author: Tomiko Inui (1924-2002) has won the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award and the Akaitori Award for Children’s Literature, and was a runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen prize. The Secret of the Blue Glass is the first of her books to be translated into English.
Ginny Tapley Takemori lives in rural Japan and has translated fiction by more than a dozen early modern and contemporary Japanese writers, from bestsellers Ryu Murakami and Kyotaro Nishimura to literary greats Izumi Kyoka and Okamoto Kido. Her most recent book publications include Miyuki Miyabe’s five-volume Puppet Master and Tomiko Inui’s The Secret of the Blue Glass, shortlisted for the Marsh Award, and her short fiction translations have appeared in Granta, Freeman’s, Words Without Borders, and a number of anthologies. Her translation of Sayaka Murata’s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel Convenience Store Woman was published in June 2018 to great acclaim. Her translation of Kyoko Nakajima’s The Little House is forthcoming in 2019. Read the BOA interview: Ginny Tapley Takemori on Translating Convenience Store Woman.
“The Cake Tree in the Ruins by Akiyuki Nosaka is a translation of Senso dowashu, a collection of war tales that are absolutely brilliant and heartbreaking” —Ginny Tapley Takemori
In 1945, Akiyuki Nosaka watched the Allied firebombing of Kobe kill his adoptive parents, and then witnessed his sister starving to death. The shocking and blisteringly memorable stories of The Cake Tree in the Ruins are based on his own experiences as a child in Japan during the Second World War.
There are stories of a lonely whale searching the oceans for a mate, who sacrifices himself for love; of a mother desperately trying to save her son with her tears; of a huge, magnificent tree which grows amid the ruins of a burnt-out town, its branches made from the sweetest cake imaginable.
Profound, heartbreaking and aglow with a piercing beauty, they express the chaos and terror of conflict, yet also how love can illuminate even the darkest moment.
Excerpt:
Of course there was no electricity, so once the sun went down all they could do was sleep.
Depending on your perspective this could be considered a very healthy lifestyle, but then there was no escaping the lack of food. Daily rations had been reduced from 350g to 320g and consisted not of rice but of defatted soy flour or maize, and even then usually arrived late. It was possible to purchase food in the countryside, but everything had been destroyed in the fires so nobody had anything to offer in exchange. Even if you did have any money it was hardly worth the paper it was printed on, while workmen’s outfits were in high demand—rubber-soled split-toed boots, work gloves, gaiters, that sort of thing.
Adults were better at enduring these conditions, but it was really tough on growing children, especially since it was the grown-ups who had gone to war in the first place while the children were simply innocent victims. For those children between the ages of five and ten in 1945, it really was a miserable existence—they had never eaten anything tasty, while however hungry the grown-ups were now they could remember eating their fill of delicious food in the past.
They would reminisce about the tasty eel in such-and-such a restaurant, and the mouth-watering tempura in another, especially the shrimp and vegetable fritters. Having really indulged themselves in the past, now that life was a bit tough they could reconcile themselves to going without.
However, the children didn’t even have memories to sustain themselves with. Rice had been rationed since 1941, sugar was hard to come by, the cakes and candies that had once flooded into the ports had vanished, and by the end of the war the only sweets available were dried bananas and sweet potatoes.
In order to survive, the children formed gangs to go scavenging for the tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins and other vegetables people had started growing in the ruins. They knew it was wrong to steal, but survival was more important to them, and they could sniff out exactly where tomatoes were turning red or pumpkins were swelling up nicely.
“Hey, what’s this tree?”
One day, they came across a single tree growing vigorously amidst the ruins. While the weeds were flourishing, all
the trees had been burnt down and any that had somehow escaped the worst of the flames had been cut down for
firewood, so it was quite impossible for there to be any healthy trees left standing. Yet this tree was full of vitality, stretching its leafy branches up to the blue sky. Indeed, it seemed to be growing before their very eyes.
“Why here?”
“This is where that big house once was. I used to come here to collect cicadas.”
“But everything must have burnt down.”
“There were a lot of trees in the garden. It must be one of those.”
“But the leaves aren’t even a little bit dried up.”
Some trees surrounding a shrine a short distance from the ruins had survived, but all their leaves had been scorched by the heat from the flames. Yet the leaves on this mysterious tree in the ruins of the big old house seemed to be sprouting one after another with fresh green growth.
“Mmm. It smells nice.”
“Yeah, and those leaves look quite tasty.”
“Don’t be silly, since when did anyone ever eat tree leaves?”
The children all knew as well as any botanist what plants they could or couldn’t eat, but they had never heard
of tree leaves being edible, however tasty they might look. Well, apart from persimmon leaves, which were dried to
make a flour that tasted slightly sweet.
One of the boys reached out and grabbed a leaf from the mysterious tree and crammed it into his mouth. He munched on it for a moment and then exclaimed loudly, “Waaah! Yum!” The boy who had been so sure that tree leaves were inedible also picked off a leaf and put it his mouth, then all of a sudden all the children were scrambling up the tree and hanging off branches to get at the leaves. A branch snapped off, releasing a sweet fragrance. The children were stunned.
“Hey, look at that!” said one, pointing at the place where the branch had broken. The age rings were clearly visible,
as they should be, but strangely the sweet smell seemed to be emanating from just that point.
“It’s soft!”
“Soft?”
“Yes, soft.”
He touched the tree and then put his finger in his mouth, and was instantly transfixed. Seeing this, the others all wordlessly followed suit, timorously touching the scar on the tree trunk and then licking their fingers. It was soft and sweet.
When they finally came to their senses, they realized this soft sweetness on their tongues was unlike anything they had ever tasted before. Everything they had eaten until now had felt coarse in their mouths, and had tasted salty. Boiled wheat-bran dumplings felt like sand, defatted soy was just like gravel, and there really were often little bits of grit mixed in with the rice gruel.
All the children started breaking off branches and gobbling them up. The tree looked just like any other ordinary
tree with hard branches, but the moment they put a piece into their mouths, it melted on their tongues and an indescribably
sweet taste spread through their entire bodies…..
About the Author: Akiyuki Nosaka (野坂 昭如) (1930 – 2015) won the Naoki Prize in 1967 for his stories Grave of the Fireflies and American Hijiki.
About the Translator: Ginny Tapley Takemori lives in rural Japan and has translated fiction by more than a dozen early modern and contemporary Japanese writers, from bestsellers Ryu Murakami and Kyotaro Nishimura to literary greats Izumi Kyoka and Okamoto Kido. Her most recent book publications include Miyuki Miyabe’s five-volume Puppet Master and Tomiko Inui’s The Secret of the Blue Glass, shortlisted for the Marsh Award, and her short fiction translations have appeared in Granta, Freeman’s, Words Without Borders, and a number of anthologies. Her translation of Sayaka Murata’s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel Convenience Store Woman was published in June 2018 to great acclaim. Her translation of Kyoko Nakajima’s The Little House is forthcoming in 2019. Read our BOA interview: Ginny Tapley Takemori on Translating Convenience Store Woman.
Synopsis: Following the death of her son, Mieko Toganō takes an increasing interest in the personal affairs of her widowed daughter-in-law, Yasuko. Devastated by her loss, she skillfully manipulates the relationships between Yasuko and the two men who are in love with her, encouraging a dalliance that will have terrible consequences. Meanwhile, hidden in the shadows, is Mieko’s mentally-handicapped daughter, who has her own role to play in her mother’s bizarre schemes.
“A subtle examination of universal female behavior.” —People
“[Enchi’s] allusions to the masks of Nō plays and to the classic The Tale of Genji, the brilliant way she layers and interweaves the ancient, the more recent past and the present are haunting and rich. A fictional enchantment.” —Publishers Weekly
Excerpt from Chapter 1
Tsuneo Ibuki and Toyoki Mikamé sat facing one another in a booth in a coffee shop on the second floor of Kyoto Station.
Between them on the narrow imitation-wood table top were a vase holding a single white chrysanthemum and an ashtray piled high with cigarette butts, suggesting that the two men had been in conversation for some time. Both had been in western Japan on business during the past several days and they had met by chance when Mikamé stepped inside the coffee shop earlier. Friends since college days, they had greeted one another with the throaty grunts that passed for hellos between them; then Mikamé had dropped down heavily across from Ibuki, who was seated alone, drinking a cup of coffee.
“When did you get here?” Ibuki asked quietly, his words accompanied by a nervous blink. Beneath the corners of his eyes the cheekbones stood out sharply; his cheeks were gaunt and hollow. An aquiline nose saved his face from being unrefined, and his bony, large-knuckled fingers were elegantly long and thin.
Ibuki’s familiar mild voice, his cigarette balanced just so between two slender fingertips oppressed Mikamé in a way that, as usual, he found curiously agreeable — like being confronted by a woman who was at once both cruel and beautiful.
“There was a medical conference in Osaka. I left Tokyo on the second. What about you?”
“I’ve been here a week, doing a lecture series for S. University. Just finished yesterday. I’m staying here at the station hotel.”
“Are you? I couldn’t have run into you at a better time. I have a ticket back to Tokyo on the train tonight. I stopped in Kyoto for the fun of it, then couldn’t decide what to do next.”
“Good timing,” said Ibuki. “Right now I’m waiting for somebody. She should be here at two. Somebody you know.”
“Who?”
“Mieko Toganō.”
“She’s in Kyoto now too?”
“Yes, Kōetsu Temple put up the stone engraving of a poem by Junryo Kawabé, and she came for the unveiling.”
“Kawabē…is she one of his circle?”
“Oh, yes; they both belong to this Clear Stream school of poetry, you know.” Ibuki looked away and slowly flicked an ash from the end of his cigarette. “Yasuko is with her.”
“Oh?” Mikamé was impassive. “Where are they staying?”
Yasuko was the widow of Mieko Toganō’s late son, Akio. Their marriage had lasted barely a year before Akio was killed suddenly in an avalanche on Mount Fuji. After the funeral, Yasuko had not gone back to her parents but had remained in the Toganō family, helping her mother-in-law edit a poetry magazine and auditing Ibuki’s classes in Japanese literature at the university where he was assistant professor. She was also involved in a detailed study of spirit possession in the Heian era, a continuation of research that Akio had left unfinished. Ibuki and others supposed she had chosen this as a way of staying close to her husband’s memory.
Ibuki had been Akio’s senior in the department by several years and had known him fairly well, both men being specialists in Heian literature; his acquaintance with Yasuko and Mieko, on the other hand, had not developed until after Akio’s death, when he had been called on to advise Yasuko in her research. Mikamé was also engaged in the study of spirit possession, although his approach was rather different. Holder of a doctorate in psychology, he was in addition an amateur of folklore studies. Having studied devil position in postbiblical Europe and the Near East, he had gone on to publish several historical surveys of Japanese folk beliefs, including belief in possession by fox spirits along the coast of the Japan Sea, by dog spirits in Shikoku, and by snake spirits in Kyushu. Of late, he too had taken an interest in the possessive spirits that cropped up in Heian literature (malign phantoms of the living or dead that forcibly took possession of others), and through Ibuki he had come to know Mieko and Yasuko. Together with some others whose interests were similar, they had formed a discussion group which met every month or two at the Toganō home.
The group tended naturally to revolve around Yasuko, but behind Yasuko was always Mieko Toganō, lending to the gatherings by her mere presence an old-fashioned easiness and grace. Yasuko was at all times charming, sparkling with intelligence as well as beauty, yet to Ibuki it was clear that her vitality depended absolutely on the serene composure of Mieko’s silent, seated figure.
In any case, Mikamé seemed highly pleased to hear that Yasuko and Mieko were also in Kyoto.
“They’re at the Camellia House on Fuya Street,” said Ibuki. “This afternoon Mieko is going to call on Yorihito Yakushiji, the Nō master. He’s showing some of his old masks and costumes, and she’s invited me along.”
About the Author: Fumiko Enchi (円地 文子 1905 – 1986) is the penname of Fumiko Ueda, on of the most prominent Japanese women writers of Japan’s Showa period (1926–1989). Enchi was honored a Person of Cultural Merit in 1979, and was awarded the Order of Culture by the Japanese government in 1985.
About the Translator: Juliet Winters Carpenter is a professor of English literature at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts and one of the foremost translators of Japanese literature working today. Her translations include Kobo Abe’s “Beyond the Curve,” Fumiko Enchi’s “Masks,” Ryotaro Shiba’s “The Last Shogun,” Jun’ichi Watanabe’s “A Lost Paradise,” and Machi Tawara’s “Salad Anniversary.” See Hon Podcast 03: Juliet Winters Carpenter Talks About Translating Japanese Literature.
“The thirty-odd voices here are among our last surviving links with Japan’s long feudal period that ended with the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868.” —Juliet Winters Carpenter
From the Translator’s Preface (abbreviated):
Years ago, as a hospital intern in Honolulu, Dr. Saga decided to visit the local library to see what information was available on Japan. He found plenty of works detailing the finer points of the tea ceremony, haiku, ukiyo-e, and Noh drama, but nothing that remotely suggested the everyday lives of men and women like those he grew up with in his birthplace, Tsuchiura. Dissatisfied with this lopsided portrayal of Japan, Saga conceived a need for other kinds of books to remedy the imbalance. Fortunately for us, he took the situation into his own hands. Memories of Wind and Waves, first published in 1995 under the title Kasumigaura Fudoki (A Topographical Record of Kasumigaura) is a set of colorful reminiscences that evokes the joys and hardships of life for fishermen and others on the shores of Lake Kasumigaura in early 20th century Ibaraki Prefecture.
Dr. Saga used a tape recorder to first record the words of these hearty men and women—all of them his own patients and friends—after work at the local clinic, and then he painstakingly transcribed, re-wrote, and re-organized them for clarity and cohesion. The process took years. The result, like his earlier, prize-winning Memories of Silk and Straw is an intimate self portrait of a Japan fast vanishing from living memory.
It cannot be stressed enough how valuable and important service Dr. Saga has done us. The thirty-odd voices here are, as he points out, among our last surviving links with Japan’s long feudal period that ended with the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868.
Juliet Winters Carpenter
About the Author: Dr. Jun’ichi Saga is a medical doctor with a general practice in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Lake Kasumigaura. He began taping his elderly patients’ reminiscences about forty years ago when he realized what a wealth of detail and information they contained. He has published numerous works of local history and ecology, three of which are available in English: Memories of Silk and Straw, “Susumu’s Saga” and “Confessions of a Yakuza.” In his spare time he does ink painting.
Note: Memories of Wind and Waves is a companion book to Memories of Silk and Straw, also by Jun’ichi Saga (translated by Gary Evans). Illustrations in both books were drawn by Jun’ichi Saga’s father, Susumu.
About the Translator:Juliet Winters Carpenter is a professor of English literature at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts and one of the foremost translators of Japanese literature working today. Her translations include Kobo Abe’s “Beyond the Curve,” Fumiko Enchi’s “Masks,” Ryotaro Shiba’s “The Last Shogun,” Jun’ichi Watanabe’s “A Lost Paradise,” and Machi Tawara’s “Salad Anniversary.” See Hon Podcast 03: Juliet Winters Carpenter Talks About Translating Japanese Literature.
Balsa stood on a rocky ledge beside a cave, the overlapping ridges of the Misty Blue Mountains dropping away beneath her. A stream rushed from the cave mouth and thundered into the basin far below, wrapping her in the tingling scent of freshwater. The hot, dry summers had passed, and the green foliage was beginning to fade. Within a month, the mountain slopes would be covered in a blaze of autumn leaves.
Balsa closed her eyes. The setting sun burned a red circle against her eyelids. She had stood on this shelf once before, after her foster father, Jiguro, had led her weeping through the caves. Just six years old, she had trembled to see the foreign land spread out below her; she could not begin to imagine the life that awaited her there. Years later, she was a bodyguard by trade, her black, weathered hair bound carelessly into a ponytail and her belongings slung over the end of her well-used spear. Those mountains to the south now separated her from everyone she loved in New Yogo, while to the north, through the cave, lay her native Kanbal, whose very name stirred bitter memories within her.
And yet now that was where she must go.
With her eyes still closed, she gently ran a finger over the long, twisting line carved into her spear shaft. Right at the first branch. Right again at the second branch, left at the third… She could hear Jiguro’s deep voice reciting the route that the mark represented.
The rugged land of Kanbal followed the contours of the Yusa mountains, “the mother range,” which hid a deep labyrinth of caves. Parents constantly warned their children to stay out of the caves, telling them stories of the darkness ruled by the Mountain King and the terrible hyohlu who guarded his kingdom. Despite these warnings, however, probably every child in Kabal ventured a little way inside at least once in his or her life. While the rock near the surface was limestone, it soon gave way to smooth white hakuma stone. A piece of hakuma was the highest badge of courage among Kanbalese children, for it proved that the bearer had gone into the darkness beyond the reach of daylight. Every few years, one or two children who snuck into the cave failed to return. Perhaps they were eaten by the hyohlu as their parents claimed, or perhaps they simply lost their way in the complex maze of tunnels.
Balsa too had been taught to fear the caves, and though she had survived countless battles through strength and bravery alone, she felt the familiar terror rising in her stomach as she stood before the dark opening. She could have entered Kanbal through the official border gate like other travelers. Rogsam, the king of Kanbal who had hunted her for fifteen years, had died a decade ago. She was the only person alive who knew how he had seized the throne; she did not need to fear reprisal, even if she strode boldly across the border. But she wanted to return through the same cave. Somehow she felt that it was the right thing to do — to walk alone through the darkness, chasing her steps to her native land.
She had tried so hard to forget Kanbal. Thinking about it hurt like an old scar, tender to the touch. Physical wounds healed over time, but the more she tried to ignore the pain in her soul, the deeper it seemed to fester. There was only one way to deal with it: she must confront it head-on.
Opening her eyes, she took a deep breath, bidding a silent farewell to the Misty Blue Mountains and everyone she loved in New Yogo. Then she turned abruptly and stepped into the darkness.
About the Author: Nahoko Uehashi is a writer of fantasy titles, whose books have sold more than a million copies in her native Japan. She has won numerous awards, including the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Award, which she received for her contribution to children’s literature throughout her life. She has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and has studied indigenous peoples in Australia. She lives near Tokyo, Japan.
About the Translator: Cathy Hirano lives in Shikoku, Japan and has translated a variety of books including best-selling authors Marie Kondo and Nahoko Uehashi.
