Balloon top: A novel

by Nobuko Albery

In an attempt to become independent, a young girl separates from her family in post-World War II Japan.

255 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[G.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating I-novel depicting a Japanese woman’s childhood and coming of age in postwar Japan. This isn’t a translation: it was written in English by the author herself, who was born Nobuko Uenishi in 1940 and created the fictional alter ego Kana Toda to tell her story in the third person.

The author’s slightly older contemporary Chieko Irie Mulhern reviewed Balloon Top in Pacific Affairs 52.2 (1979): 345-46 and memorably described it as “distinguished by its verb-rich, qualifier-sparing, crisp style and its dynamic imagery, often startlingly inventive, vital, and unpredictable.” A couple of examples:
“…Mrs Takano, a shy, emaciated lady warped like an elegant fish fork.” (p.89)
“The sky was washed clean of rain clouds as they stepped out of Shinjuku tube station; the district of bargain-priced pleasures shimmered like an illuminated aquarium.” (p.171)

Part One narrates Kana’s childhood and adolescence, full of the sorts of incidents that burn in memory for years—being bullied by boys, overheard family secrets, the shock of first menstruation. And yet it’s all done with a light touch. One example: Kana has a friend whose father studied for many years in Munich and brought some odd customs back to Japan, one of them the notion that members of his family should have locks on their bedroom doors.

‘Mother, could we put a lock on my door?’ soon Kana was pestering her mother.
‘How are we going to put an iron lock on a paper door?’ Mrs Toda did not bother to look up from her calligraphy practice. ‘Why?’
‘Why? Because, Mother, pri-vacy!’
‘Privacy!’ Contrary to the alarm expressed in her voice, Mrs Toda’s hand holding a long writing brush swept serenely over the paper. ‘It’s not good for you at your age.’ (p.88)

Part Two takes us from entrance examination hell through the heroine’s undergraduate studies at Waseda University, where she joins a drama group, becomes a Zengakuren activist (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zengakuren), and participates in the anti U.S.-Japanese Security Treaty protests of 1960 (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anpo_pr...). The group does a provincial tour, the “mud road,” playing to “fruit-canning factory girls led by their union officials,” town officials, shopkeepers and farmers. When Kana muses, “They were the people whom she was now determined to love, to share with and to work for,” you know things aren’t going to go well.

When the mimeographed leaflets on ANPO were passed around, the audience took a cursory glance at the headlines: “Why alienate Japan from the Asian community by signing the security treaty with the USA?” and promptly used the leaflets to fan themselves. …no, they did not want to know about ANPO, or about missile bases, Okinawa or Hiroshima. Desperate to break the stagnant silence, Beret pinned a last hope on a group of unsmiling keen-eyed high-school boys. […]
“How much a month would it cost to live and study in Tokyo?” the first boy asked, making way for a deluge of questions entirely confined to their own selfish futures. “Does Waseda have a better Agricultural Department than Nippon?” (p.194)

Needless to say, Kana’s family take a dim view of her involvement in radical student politics. And yet the show-down with her father when it comes is hilarious:

“Indigestion of too much liberalism. I’ll have to disown you if you get involved with the ZGR nonsense again. …Either conform to my capitalistic way of life and benefit from it—who’s ever heard of a Communist student with a 20,000 yen monthly allowance?—or go to a kolkhoz in Siberia or where you will. One or the other, understand? Meanwhile, I’ll have your apahto cleared out.” (p.235)

After the failure of Zengakuren and other groups to prevent the signing of the ANPO Treaty, Kana’s friends go their separate ways—they join ZGR factions (some of which were still in evidence when I started teaching at Waseda twenty years ago) or Buddhist communes; others sign up with the majority and begin working for advertising agencies and gossip magazines; the women get married and/or eke out a living translating French. Kana makes her own decision, and as we know from Nobuko Albery’s life story, ends up leaving Japan.

Well worth reading for its vivid writing and meticulously recalled period detail.

[Oleander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Balloon Top is an excellent piece of fiction. For a coming-of-age novel set in an foreign-occupied post-war Japan, this book featured a lot more heavy literary themes than I expected. There is social commentary, a back drop of large-scale change and revolution, complex family relationships - particularly a striking and regrettably relatable depiction of a mother and daughter relationship, and in the center of it all is Kana, a people-pleasing eldest daughter who doesn't know who she is or what she wants in life.

When Kana was a child, the world around her was very unstable. They were surviving, as most families were during the war, the best they could. This instability carries on into her teenage years where she studies frantically, often late into the night, to get into a good university, despite not knowing why she's doing so, where she wants to go or even if she wants to go at all. There is a scene where Kana and her sister are both stretched out on the terrace of their home at night. Kana is seventeen and overwhelmed by the choices she must make. She cries, dreading being an adult and the responsibilities that come with growing up when she still feels so unsure of herself, and she and her sister dance around beneath the moon because 'how else could they respond to such beauty?' She mourns her youth and her sudden lack of usefulness brought on by not knowing what to do with all the years she has left, and I thought that this is the kind of catharsis I think most of us desire when the world gets to be too much. The thought has really stuck with me.

The pace of the story then changes in part two. The student movement infringes upon her life at university with sudden alacrity, infused with the unrestrained need for changes that will benefit their future selves. She is swept into the flurry via a theatre group, and becomes good friends with a number of key revolutionary figures. It's here where she finds a cause - a reason to do what she does, and dedicate herself towards - and also where there is an increase in social commentary on the current political landscape of Japan during that time period. I wasn't expecting it, but it was included very well, and then when the movement failed and the cause died, something was extinguished in Kana too. She finally found something of her own to believe in and act towards, only for it to fail. She loses her footing, admitting to her father that she is deeply unhappy before distancing herself from the movement all together. It is only towards the end, after seeing how so many of her friends who were neck-deep in the action have surrendered docilely to the changes, does she set out to find a end of her own that she can move on from and remain wholly her own person.

To summarize, this book reads a lot like a Murakami novel if it were written about a woman by a woman. Kana is a girl who had the opportunity to be anything in a changed country and felt she had to be everything, and I felt that deeply. There is so much to unpack that for such a short book, it took me a surprising amount of time to read it, but it was definitely worth it. I honestly can't recommend it enough.

[Terri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Never expected it would end that way. Really just a story of a girl coming to adulthood and exploring her identity by becoming an anti-government protester. Interesting look at Japanese culture.

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Balloon Top" provides an exceptional view of post-WWII Japan as seen through the eyes of Kanaka "Kana" Toda, who was a small child during the war.