Hemkomsten

by Jirō Osaragi, Christina Strandberg (Översättare)

Japanese fiction.

Genres: Japanese Literature, Japan, Fiction

255 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

Reviews

[Syahiran Ramli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sekian lama hiatus lepas capai sasaran Goodreads, diteruskan semula dengan bacaan terjemahan Homecoming (Kikyo). Latar belakang zaman penjajahan Jepun. Mengisahkan tentang Kyogo Moriya seorang pegawai tentera laut yang menjadi buangan setelah menggelapkan wang kerajaan.

Kyogo menyaksikan bagaimana peritnya tentera Jepun yang menyerah kalah setelah pengeboman nuklear. Dalam kalangan tentera tersebut adanya rakyat biasa yang dikerah (bukan atas kerelaan) untuk menjadi tentera yang akhirnya menjadi satu trauma besar kepada mereka.

Menariknya novel ini menceritakan bagaimana suasana Melaka dan Singapura yang pernah menjadi sebahagian daripada Tanah Melayu dijajah oleh tentera Jepun ketika itu. Di sini jugalah Kyogo bertemu seorang perempuan bangsawan yang cukup licik iaitu Saeko Takano.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Homecoming is a charming novel. Set in post-WWII Japan, it follows the lives of several characters whose fates intertwine in coincidental, fleeting ways. This novel is ordinary; relationships and events end anticlimactically while a languorous mood pervades the plot. There's something distant about Jiro Osaragi's style—we never get to know much about the characters nor the war-torn psyche of Japan.

The best parts of this book are Osaragi's writings on Japan. Kyoto: ancient shrines, abandoned streets, oppressive heat, flowering willow trees, and mountain views. Tokyo: cabarets in Ginza, streets crowded with students wearing Western-style clothes, busy train stations, poor labourers crowding in slums. Despite the somewhat romantic view of the past, and the present portrayal of a weak and impoverished country, the not-so-distant future seems to have a brightness to it, somehow.

Most of the plot revolves around Saeko and Kyogo. Saeko is an elegant, wealthy maverick who ran a restaurant in Malacca and later returned to Japan where she remains a kind of shady entrepreneur. It's unclear where her fortune came from or what motivates her. Kyogo is a disgraced ex-Navy man who left Japan after embezzling money from the military to support his gambling habit. He's a stoic man who spent years wandering Europe and Asia, rarely thinking of his home or his estranged wife and daughter. When Japan surrenders he realizes he can return there without consequence, though he never intended to do so . . .

An intriguing cast of secondary characters exist to orchestrate the meetings between Saeko and Kyogo, Kyogo and his now-22-year-old daughter, Tomoko, and Saeko and Tomoko. The meetings are aimless. The characters seem unable to decide what they want from each other or from life in general. The ending is strange. We learn that Saeko was responsible for getting Kyogo imprisoned in Singapore at the end of the war. Yet she finds herself falling hopelessly in love with him, even though she knows he must hold a grudge from her despite the passage of so much time. Saeko meets him at his hotel room where she proposes they start a relationship. He persuades her to gamble on a simple card game with him. At stake is everything they own, literally. Kyogo wins the game and disappears to resume his life of travelling. He leaves a bank draft for Saeko along with a note that asks her to donate his money along with some of her fortune towards charities for homeless children and victims of war.

Although I found this novel hard to put down, I wouldn't say that I enjoyed it. Anticipating the next unlikely encounters kept me reading. There's something satisfying about the way Osaragi weaves together the threads of the stories. Homecoming is flat, though. I'm not sure if it's just the translation, but the entire thing is so dispassionate. Even the few scenes of soldiers, who were issued grenades in case they have to kill themselves, seem as placid as the scenes of avenues lined with cherry blossoms. The dialogue is bland with no distinctions between characters. I did appreciate the author's evenhandedness—war isn't a spectacle, nor is anti-war moralizing a huge feature of the story—and it's impressive that he created a novel full of so much nothing. I just wished for something more. I don't mind that the ending was abrupt and discordant or that the relationships remained unfulfilled (in fact, I usually enjoy these subversive plots...or would they be considered conventional in Japanese literature?) Reading this book was like staring out the window of a moving car on a long road trip. No matter how nice the view is, you can't help but feel too passive, too restless.

[Ad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kikyo (“Homecoming”) by Osaragi Jiro was the first modern Japanese novel translated into English after WWII.

Osaragi Jiro (1897-1973) is primarily known as author of a large number of popular historical novels, but he also wrote contemporary novels, such as Homecoming, a glimpse into the soul of postwar Japan.

Protagonist Kyogo has been forced into exile many years before the war by a scandal in the Japanese Navy. While hiding in Singapore during the war, he is betrayed to the Japanese Secret Police by a beautiful but shrewd diamond-smuggler, Saeko. After the war ends he is set free and travels to Japan to see what has become of his homeland. His wife has remarried (thinking him dead) and he is in the way of her husband, an opportunistic professor with political ambitions. He decides to leave Japan again – a country he now sees with the eyes of a foreigner, although he has also newly discovered the beauty of Kyoto – and not be an obstruction to anyone, but before leaving has a meeting with his now grown-up daughter, which allows him to reassure himself concerning her happiness.

A similar novel about the anguish of intellectuals in postwar Japan by Osaragi is Tabiji (“The Journey”) from 1953, which has also been translated. American publishers started with "safe" middle-brow novels.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Homecoming gave me, for the first time, insight into the nature of the mid-century Japanese novel, as well as understanding of the term "floating world" as it is applied to both life and literature. Here, the constant meetings and partings and the continual shift between pleasure and pain reflected this world. Although I have known and appreciated Japanese art for some time, I never realized how there is a specific aesthetic approach to literature as well, particularly in the use of landscape and nature to reflect human emotions, the purposeful lack of a resolution at the end of the story, and the understanding of character as a form of fate. I now need to go back and read some previously read Japanese novels with this new awareness and appreciation.

[Giulia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and deep portrayal of Japanese culture.
"And it was not the sound of water in itself that they liked, it was water as it sounded in nature, or as close to it as possible, that Japanese wanted to hear, and they built their houses accordingly. (...) Their lives were bound in the living, and they were trained to find pleasure in meager little things."

[Maria Georgieva · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the style of the book all the way through, as well as the story line and the characters. I only gave it 4 stars because for me the ending was a bit disappointing and somehow flat.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Osaragi merits praise for engagingly depicting life in Japan after its crushing defeat in WW II. He does this in two ways. First, with impressive insight he portrays the complex, at times ambivalent, thoughts and feelings of his characters about themselves, their lives, and their relationships with each other. Second, the dialogues between them afforded the author the opportunity to portray the tensions between those seeking to preserve versus those wishing to abandon the country’s traditional values. As Homecoming progresses these become real people each trying in his/her own way to create a life for themselves in the aftermath of the social, emotional, and physical chaos of the war.

Readers unfamiliar with Japan will learn much about the significance of reciprocity in the traditional social and familial lives of the people. The author’s vivid descriptions of those parts of the country which were destroyed and those which were not during the war afford a stark and informative contrast. As is often the case with Japanese fiction lush depictions of nature and the weather enhance the impressions of life there, demonstrate how important this aspect of life is to traditional Japan, and at times effectively symbolize the tensions Osaragi is trying to communicate.

I found two modest flaws with Homecoming. First, these descriptions sometimes get to be a bit long winded for my tastes. Second, the extent to which characters meet by coincidence gets to be excessive IMHO.

While the protagonist Kyogo achieves some resolution by the end of the novel, the other characters are still dealing with their lives. Whereas some reviewers might found this unsatisfying I found it to be realistic. I do wish, however, that the author had written a sequel in which the lives of some of the other characters might have been developed further.

One of Osaragi’s other novels has been translated into Japanese: The Journey. As it is available via my local public library I will place it on my list of Japanese fiction to be read in the coming months.

[Shaharuddin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cerita yang panjang dan banyak watak tapi tidak membosankan. Kisah negara Jepun selepas kalah perang. Seperti menonton filem anime. Kisah tentang kuil-kuil Jepun seperti filem Your Name, kisah pembangunan selepas perang seperti In The Corner of The World dan taman-taman Jepun seperti dalam filem Word Garden. Semua gambaran sesuatu tempat seperti Tokyo, Yokohama dan Kyoto diimiginasikan dengan teliti, tentang air longkangnya, bunyi hujan, kabus semasa mendaki dan bunyi air terjun tiruan dan banyak lagi. Juga menarik ada peranan Melaka dan Singapura yang sangat penting. Juga budaya masyarakat Jepun selepas perang yang malu dan putus asa. Nampak sangat yang perang telah menyebabkan Jepun menjadi bangsa yang maju.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have just finished reading homecoming nearly a year on and off reading it it's just a kind of book you'll never find a new copy of it and so it was a second hand copy from a past reader called warner wrote his name on the first page his name keep me company through my journey through the season which keep changing along the noevel it's nice polite novel full of sceneries what I have imagined about how a Japanese author would describe Japan
I loved it I began it in winter I finished in autumn just like how it ends too the novel
I am lucky to read it get to imagine how jiro see Japan through his own eyes

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the first modern fiction books translated into English. Follows several characters as they attempt to adapt to post-War Japan. Interesting insights to life after war, though the ending seemed a little out of place with the rest of the book's stories.

[Azin · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

[Rizma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Death probably wasn't frightening. That didn't require courage. But living as to avoid death-that has been frightening and cruel" - Homecoming