Mandala Road

by Masako Bandō, Wayne P. Lammers (Translator)

Two generations of the Nonezawa family – Asafumi and his wife Shizuka, and Asafumi’s grandfather Rentarō and his Malayan lover Saya – are connected across the years by the mysterious Mandala Road, which simultaneously casts Asafumi and Rentarō from their respective ages into a haunting post-apocalyptic world. As becomes apparent, Asafumi, Rentarō, Saya, and Shizuka are all, in their own way, on a private journey to discover and reconcile themselves with their memories of violence, both seen and experienced, as they struggle to understand themselves, unearth the emotions they have repressed, and learn to live with a past that seems always to be too close behind them.

Genres: Fiction, Japan

369 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2012

Reviews

[Tenma · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Mandala Road” is an interesting, complex, and grossly underrated novel. It starts as a contemporary slice-of life tale of marital infidelity that suddenly turns into a post-apocalyptic alternate/parallel reality thriller one third into the book!

Overall, “Mandala Road” is a literary critique and exposé of the brutality of the Japanese during WWII; and more specifically their mistreatment, abuse, and violence against women. The suffering of “comfort-women” (and women in general) during and after WWII and the complexity of marital relationships were elegantly portrayed in the form of a post-apocalyptic fantasy fiction in this book.

Asafumi, a modern-day medicine peddler finds a log book, a sales register that belonged to his grandfather, which listed the name of customers in remote villages along the desolate “mandala” road. To check on the status of his grandfather’s customers, Asafumi embarks on a journey along the now abandoned “mandala road”. While traveling, Asafumi is time-transported to a post-apocalyptic world where all forms of civilization are lost and the few remaining survivors are driven to live by their animal instincts. In this parallel reality, Asafumi is reunited with his grandfather, Rentaro. Their harrowing experiences forces Asafumi and Rentaor (and their wives in the real world) to re evaluate their relationships and the meaning of life. Indirectly, they also force the reader to better grasp the circumstances that drive a normal human being to commit atrocities at times of war.

This was a well written and a very a well-researched novel. I truly enjoyed this book as it has a bit of everything. There is the family drama; a read into the subject of sexuality, adultery, and family dynamics in modern Japanese culture; a bit of science fiction, time transport, and post-apocalyptic terror; and the more serious look into the suffering and abuse of women during and after WWII as alluded to above. This novel was the closest that I found to Murakami’s “Hard Boiled Wonderland”. I would have readily given this book five stars if not for the frequent erotic references and the explicit adult content. From this perspective, it reminds me of “Norwegian Wood”, another Murakami work.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 2 out of 5]

365 pages is somewhat long for a Japanese novel. I'm giving this two stars because it actually compelled me to finish it. The first half is a rather excellent drama, but after 180 pages, it degenerates into a dumbass fantasy. I knew the book was going to have some mystical aspects based on the back cover blurb, but I was hoping, given the restraint shown in the first half, that it wasn't going to be stupid. But it was stupid, and largely pointless, and too easily resolved, leaving you with nothing gained.

[Brigitte · Rating 2 out of 5]

was interested because I knew her personally.
It was real researched, interesting from an historical point of view in a way but I did not really like her style as there was too much gore and she did not make her characters "likable"