賢者の愛

by Amy Yamada, 山田 詠美

初恋の人を奪った親友の息子に、『痴人の愛』から「直巳」と名付けた真由子。22歳年下の直巳を手塩に掛けて“調教”し―。憧れ、嫉妬、そして復讐。谷崎潤一郎賞作家がおくる、絢爛豪華な愛憎劇がここに!

Genres: Japanese Literature

269 pages, Tankobon Hardcover

First published January 9, 2015

About the author

Amy Yamada (AKA 山田 詠美, Yamada Eimi) born February 8, 1959, is a popular but controversial contemporary Japanese writer who is most famous for her stories that address issues of sexuality, racism, and interracial marriage, topics not typically discussed openly in Japanese society.

Born in Tokyo as Futaba Yamada, she lived in several places around Japan due to her father's job. This transient lifestyle forced her to confront issues of separation and bullying, issues that many of her protagonists also deal with.

According to her interview with the Japanese magazine Bungei, during middle school she was moved by African-American soul music and began to read any novels she could find written by black people, or featuring black people. She held a job in the Roppongi district of Tokyo, an area rich with foreigners.

After graduating from high school in 1977, she entered Meiji University's Literature Department, but dropped out before graduating. After a short stint writing and drawing manga, she began writing novels in 1980. Though her works garnered some attention, even receiving praise from Japanese literary critic Jun Eto (江藤淳 Eto Jun?), she only achieved widespread recognition in 1985, when Bedtime Eyes won the Bungei Prize. In writing Bedtime Eyes, Yamada drew upon her experiences with black people and black culture and combined them with the Japanese literary tradition.

In 1996, "Trash" was published in English translation by Kodansha International (translator: Sonya L. Johnson). In May 2006, three of Yamada's novellas (Bedtime Eyes 「ベッドタイム･アイズ」, The Piano Player's Fingers 「指の戯れ」 and Jesse 「ジェシーの背骨」) were published in English translation (translators: Yumi Gunji and Marc Jardine) as a single volume by St Martin's Press under the collective title Bedtime Eyes.

In Yamada's second collection of works, Jesse's Spine, Yamada depicts the experiences of a woman who is learning to adjust to life with her lover's child from another relationship. The writing style of this work has been compared to William Saroyan's novel, Papa You're Crazy. Through her depiction of the child's perspective on the world, her book was a critical success, earning her a nomination for the Akutagawa Prize for new authors. In her short novels Classroom for the Abandoned Dead, Afterschool Music, and I Can't Study, Yamada tackles the topics of childhood life, bullying, and school life. In an interview with Bungei Shunjū upon winning the Akutagawa Prize, Risa Wataya and Hitomi Kanehara named Yamada's Afterschool Music as one of their major influences, explaining that her works were one of the greatest depictions of modern Japan.

Reviews

[アマチュア読者 · Rating 5 out of 5]

很過癮
而那過癮的源頭不是性愛，而是復仇。

對百合的憤怒一次又一次地讓真由子性致勃勃，
這也讓她得到了完全的勝利，因為仇恨比性慾更長久。

老人用性慾餵養NAOMI，所以NAOMI變質了，異化了，她搶過了主控權。
兩人沉浸在痴人的世界裡。

但真由子很聰明，她用一天去支付直已的一生。
那是永無法停止渴求的慾望。
她給了他近乎所有，但他的心將永遠不再滿足。

男人被當成庸俗的東西長大，女人也是，但那是另類的庸俗。

當「正悟先生」看著百合的時候，他真的是看著百合嗎?
那裏面沒有一絲的真由子嗎?

而諒一，他就是需要庸俗在他身旁陪襯，庸俗才好，庸俗不麻煩。

p.184『我繼承了爸爸的血』
不是噢，不是這樣的。「正悟先生」跟真由子行動的理由完全不同吧。

性愛是肉體碰撞，但仇恨是在你的腦裡馬不停蹄地打轉。

百合的妒忌、真由子的憤怒、「正悟先生」的色慾、諒一的傲慢

人們會在各種善意與惡意的驅使之下改變他人的一生。

然後我好喜歡時田那不時一針見血的描述。

p.136
哦，可是，她或許還是侵犯他了吧？用她的語言這種性器，插入他的身體。因為真由子長年來對百合的怨恨，一直保持著鮮度，讓她自己不斷勃起。