Indian Summer: A Novel

New Japanese Horizons

by Mieko Kanai, Tomoko Aoyama (Translator), Barbara Hartley (Translator)

Indian Summer (Koharu biyori) is the title of a relatively short novel by Kanai Mieko (b. 1947), recognized by critics both inside and outside Japan as one of the most important Japanese writers of recent decades. The work brilliantly demonstrates Kanai's light-hearted wit in addition to her penchant for biting commentary on conservative elements in Japanese society. Besides being a novelist, Kanai is an acclaimed essayist, film and literary critic, and poet, and has produced a steady output of high-quality material since making her literary debut in her teens.

Genres: Japan, Fiction, Japanese Literature

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Mieko Kanai (金井 美恵子 Kanai Mieko?, born November 3, 1947 in Takasaki) is a Japanese writer of fiction, especially short stories, as well as poetry. She is also a literary critic.

Mieko Kanai read widely in fiction and poetry from an early age. In 1967, at the young age of twenty, she was runner-up for the Dazai Osamu Prize for Ai no seikatsu (A Life of Love), and the following year she received the Gendaishi Techo Prize for poetry. While maintaining a certain distance from literary circles and journalism, she has built up her own world of fiction with a sensual style. Along with her fiction, her criticism, which shows off her scathing, acid insight, has a devoted following.

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published in instalments in the 1980s, this has a lot in common with Kanai Mieko’s later Mild Vertigo although the overall tone is much lighter. It’s part of a series of loosely-connected, slice-of-life pieces set in Mejiro, the area of Tokyo where Kanai lived and worked. Kanai’s story is centred on two women, Momoko a 19-year-old student and her writer aunt Chieko who’s struggling with menopause and what she characterises as mid-life crisis, alternating between sleeping and sudden bursts of creativity. The two are thrown together by Chieko’s deeply conventional sister, Momoko’s mother, who’s anxious her daughter not be left to her own devices in the city.

Kanai’s narrative is highly intertextual, packed with references to films and literature, echoing her background both as an author and as a critic. Momoko and her university friend Hanako find university dull, so they skip classes, spending their spare time eating, reading, watching movies and discussing cinema -particularly French New Wave from Godard to Rohmer. Rohmer often thought of his films as akin to novels, and Kanai’s representation of Momoko and Chieko’s activities are strongly reminiscent of his approach, particularly in series like “Comedies and Proverbs” which meticulously reconstruct the activities of younger people, mostly women, going about their daily lives, sometimes caught up in intense conversations and reflections on life and culture. Kanai is similarly interested in the overlooked, and the seemingly inconsequential, aspects of the everyday, as well as in family dynamics, generational divides, and what they might reveal about Japanese society: here highlighted in the contrast between Chieko and Momoko’s seemingly freewheeling approach to life and the more conservative expectations people like Momoko’s mother attempt to impose on them.

In her afterword Kanai declares her interest in what was understood in Japan as “girls’ fiction” not so much work aimed at younger readers, as fiction explicitly addressing the world of women and targeting women audiences. She playfully references this subgenre through her depiction of the relationship between Momoko and the androgynous Hanako which parodies the female friendships so central to Yoshiya Nobuko’s classic flower girl stories. She also incorporates aspects of well-known, coming-of-age narratives as the naïve, self-conscious but opinionated Momoko tries and discards possible identities taken from books: from De Beauvoir to Bonjour Tristesse. Kanai, an astute social commentator, broadens out to construct a portrait of key elements of Japanese middle-class society, introducing figures like Momoko’s estranged father whose obsession with designer goods encapsulates the growing impact of consumer culture in 1980s Japan with its emphasis on wealth and material desire. Kanai’s presentation of Momoko’s experiences is often very funny, verging on satire, particularly the portrayal of Momoko’s disappointment at her aunt’s failure to live up to her idea of a writer.

Kanai loved to flout the boundaries between so-called popular and experimental fiction, so she disrupts the mannered realism of Momoko’s story by inserting extracts from Chieko’s essays and short stories which also act as a commentary on the rest of the text from reflections on the horrors of dentistry to romance fiction to musings on Barthes to stories dealing with issues surrounding abortion and gender roles. The result is fluid and highly entertaining but also thought-provoking and incisive, and I relished the sense of place and the vivid depiction of Mejiro, its surroundings and its expanding gay community, although I didn’t find the technique of juxtaposing different forms of text as effective as it was in Mild Vertigo. Translated by Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley

Rating: 3.5

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly charming. Not a lot of plot, but more like a ramble through the mind of a twenty year old Japanese woman over one summer. Reminds me of BONJOUR TRISTESSE.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author describes this as a "girls' novel" and explains how she grew up reading them. It's certainly not YA or chicklit. A 19 year old "girl" goes to university in Tokyo and because she can't live on her own, according to her mother, moves in with her aunt, a novelist. The aunt is a character and lives her independent life. She makes a new friend in class. Adventures ensue. She once dates a boy from home, nicknamed Crab Stick, since his family is in fish supplying. Crab Stick lays out a life plan involving marriage and business on their first date. Our "girl" is not impressed. Apparently this has a sequel in which I'd be interested.


WSU library

[Rhea · Rating 3 out of 5]

The translation notes said there are sequels. I'd love to read them.

This is a sort of chill book. Very relaxing.

[Temy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5