Ghosts

by Morio Kita, Dennis Keene (Translator)

A pattern on a carpet; a red cocktail cherry; hide-and-seek in the dark; gravestones; a waterfall; a silver butterfly; a sister's death; a botched drawing; the sound of a flute.... Ghosts is a novel about the quest for a lost childhood, of which only fragments like these remain. Memory is focused like a magnifying glass on these clues to one man's past. Small, commonplace things are thus enhanced, and even simple events--relaxing in a bath, or flying a kite, or being unable to whistle--take on the same kind of aura that more dramatic ones have. In trying to remember, the narrator learns to see the world again with the intensity of a small child's eyes--a gift that readers of Kita's brilliant, longer novel, The House of Nire, will recognize as one that illuminates all his work. And, though in Ghosts the searcher does eventually rediscover some of the key episodes and images of a hidden past, his ultimate discovery perhaps is that the ordinary is in itself profound; and that what gives dignity to the insignificance of human life is the presence of the natural world, shown here in passages of precise and moving description. Kita started writing this novel when he was twenty-three. It is a young man's book, produced at a time when postwar Japanese literature was itself still young, the sort of book that will probably never be written again since writers now have lost the kind of innocence that allows one to reach truths of this order. Given the narrator's obsession with butterflies and moths, readers may be reminded of Nabokov, even if the real powers behind the book are Mann and Rilke. But they will not be wrong for here, too, memory speaks with its real voice, telling its truest fictions.

Genres: Japanese Literature, Fiction, Japan, Historical

193 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Morio Kita was the pen name of Japanese novelist, essayist, and psychiatrist, Sokichi Saitō. He attended Azabu High School, Matsumoto Higher School (now part of Shinshu University) and graduated from Tohoku University's School of Medicine.
He initially worked as a doctor at Keio University Hospital. Motivated by the collections of his father's poems and the books of German author Thomas Mann, he decided to become a novelist.
He is the father of the essayist Yuka Saitō.

Reviews

[hotsake (André Troesch) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A men contemplates his life during four points in his life. The first of the four parts was the most interesting with each successive parts losing my interest a bit more.

[L.S. Popovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Morio Kita wrote this book and House of Nire, which is much longer. Ghosts is a good introduction to his singular style. It is very mellifluent, and not a chore to read. You could call the plot slow, or even glacial, but what matters is the accumulation of details, which is immense. Even though this is an average-length novel, and a typical first-person bildungsroman, there are a lot of unique perspectives, like a shifting kaleidoscope, offered by the gradually maturing narrator. The narrator is as concerned with insects and butterflies as about the terrible deaths of the people around him.
To give you an idea of the extended metaphors and exquisite tension in the book, here is my favorite passage:

I often thought, when I was small, how I would at last be accepted by people when I was grown up, too, but now I was actually approaching that age my sense of alienation from them all became, if anything, even deeper. Trying to ignore the heaviness in my head, I walked faster, feeling like a puppet under somebody's else's control. I remembered having this feeling once before. It was like a child flying a kite, so passionately absorbed in it that he goes on until the light begins to fade, even though he's terrified of the dark. The kite is about as big as he is, and the cold wind tugs at his collar; and then he notices the world about him and begins to drag down the kite, floating high up in the sky. With one eye on the darkness gradually closing in, he feverishly winds and winds the string. The string tangles, caught perhaps in the withered grass of the wide field, but he goes on winding and winding without end, and the string keeps appearing endlessly out of the surrounding dark. He bites his lip to hold back the tears and he keeps on winding, urgently, despairingly, almost as if the string were moving him. And I felt the same thing now, when all that mattered was to keep on moving, moving one's arms and legs.

By sinking in with this novel, you will gain a sense of impending death, which surrounds the main character like a dark fog. Due to the similarities between this work and the setting of The House of Nire, I think it is safe to conclude that they are both to some degree autobiographical. If you like Anaiis Nin, you will get some of the same feeling from immersing yourself in this book. I would rank this book very highly and greatly look forward to embarking on reading the monolithic House of Nire soon.

[Joanne Fate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate to give any Japanese fiction less than 4 stars. but I never really enjoyed this. I believe that I've read at least one other book by Morio Kita that I found very good. I wanted to care about the main character, but found him moderately likeable. Usually the wartime and postwar angst is evident, but despite the sadness of his background, I never developed a deep empathy for him. It is well written, but it was not for me.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eerie, dream-like story about a post-WWII Japanese youth going back through faded memories of growing up while the story also continues through his present to a climax where... well... wont spoil it, but I really liked what Kita does. There were moments where the writing felt a little poor, too abstruse for me.