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Reconciliation
Reconciliation, published here for the first time in the English language, is an understated masterpiece of the Japanese 'I novel' tradition (a confessional literary form). Naoya Shiga's novella is a quietly devastating reflection on all kinds of reconciliation: from his own familial reunion, to the universal need to reconcile ourselves to the inevitability of ageing, loss and death.
"Naoya Shiga's engaging and finely wrought novella of birth, death, illness and a writer's angst opens a window onto a society and milieu that are both distant and relatable. Watching the autobiographical protagonist trip over his flaws as a husband and son is painful, but the resolution still lifts the heart a century after publication. Ted Goossen's nuanced rendition of this miniature classic is a marvel of the translator's art and a service to the Republic of Letters" (DAVID MITCHELL)
"Naoya Shiga's engaging and finely wrought novella of birth, death, illness and a writer's angst opens a window onto a society and milieu that are both distant and relatable. Watching the autobiographical protagonist trip over his flaws as a husband and son is painful, but the resolution still lifts the heart a century after publication. Ted Goossen's nuanced rendition of this miniature classic is a marvel of the translator's art and a service to the Republic of Letters" (DAVID MITCHELL)
160 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 6, 2020
About the author
Naoya Shiga
103 books71 followersNaoya Shiga (志賀 直哉) was a Japanese novelist and short story writer active during the Taishō and Showa periods of Japan.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 8, 2021
*Score: 7.0/10*
This is a novella based on the author's own experience with his tension with his father, and his attempt of reconciliation. This is a common style in Japanese Literature called I-Novel which is fiction but based on many actual events and has a confessional tone to it.
This is a very simple book, focused primarily on the author's relation with his father, as well as rest of his family (grandmother, mother, wife and few others). It deals mainly with the theme of how humans usually don't achieve simple goals of harmony with their loved ones through putting many arguments and silly obstacles in the way, and consequences of being stubborn.
I expected this to be very dark, but surprisingly barring one part, this generally felt more light in nature than I expected. Overall it was nice and enjoyable, though I admit the one dark part of it truely stood out to me and showed me the potential of this author if he deals with a dark topic. This short section was absoluetly masterful, and was so tense and will leave a really long lasting memory for me, much more than the actual main storyline of this book.
Prose and structure all were very straighforward, not too complex as I have hoped but also avoids being shallow or too superfecial, achieving a decent amount of introspective thoughts.
It felt more of a 3 / 3.5 stars read to me, but that one dark section warrants easily one additional star hence bumping this to 4 star, and I am hoping the author's other works are closer in nature to this part as I can clearly see myself being a fan if he delivers a full novel of this style.
This is a novella based on the author's own experience with his tension with his father, and his attempt of reconciliation. This is a common style in Japanese Literature called I-Novel which is fiction but based on many actual events and has a confessional tone to it.
This is a very simple book, focused primarily on the author's relation with his father, as well as rest of his family (grandmother, mother, wife and few others). It deals mainly with the theme of how humans usually don't achieve simple goals of harmony with their loved ones through putting many arguments and silly obstacles in the way, and consequences of being stubborn.
I expected this to be very dark, but surprisingly barring one part, this generally felt more light in nature than I expected. Overall it was nice and enjoyable, though I admit the one dark part of it truely stood out to me and showed me the potential of this author if he deals with a dark topic. This short section was absoluetly masterful, and was so tense and will leave a really long lasting memory for me, much more than the actual main storyline of this book.
Prose and structure all were very straighforward, not too complex as I have hoped but also avoids being shallow or too superfecial, achieving a decent amount of introspective thoughts.
It felt more of a 3 / 3.5 stars read to me, but that one dark section warrants easily one additional star hence bumping this to 4 star, and I am hoping the author's other works are closer in nature to this part as I can clearly see myself being a fan if he delivers a full novel of this style.
June 11, 2023
This is a beautiful book except for a chapter that includes medical decisions that would not be made today, thankfully. I absolutely loved it. The main character, based on the author, is trying to reconcile with his estranged father who did not approve of his marriage.
I believe it was the only book by this author that I've ever read. The novel is considered an I-novel, very popular in Japan in the early 1900s. It was written and published serially in the late 1910s. This translation is from a republished 1948 book. I hope to read more by Naoya Shiga, but it seems the only way is to find used paper books. 5 stars all the way.
I believe it was the only book by this author that I've ever read. The novel is considered an I-novel, very popular in Japan in the early 1900s. It was written and published serially in the late 1910s. This translation is from a republished 1948 book. I hope to read more by Naoya Shiga, but it seems the only way is to find used paper books. 5 stars all the way.
March 2, 2023
Translated by Ted Goossen, Naoya Shiga’s Reconciliation is considered a classic of Japanese literature. First published in 1917, and written over the course of just 5 weeks, this novella is described as ‘an understated masterpiece of the Japanese “I novel” tradition (a confessional literary form).’ Shiga was the ‘most celebrated practitioner’ of autobiographical fiction in the country, and went by the ‘god of prose’.
The Translator’s Note, written by Goossen, adds a great deal of context, and information about the author himself. Goossen comments that the novella is ‘highly factual, at least on the surface.’ It was written ‘immediately after the culmination of the drama it describes’: the author’s firstborn daughter dying when she was just a baby, the birth of his second child, and the illness of his beloved grandmother.
For Goossen, the novella ‘is charged with an elemental force that renders the distinction between so-called fact and fiction quite irrelevant.’ One of the ‘most striking features’ of this story for its translator is ‘the close relationship between life and art… [It is] a novella about being unable to write, strewn with references to failed or abandoned works.’ He then goes on to speak about the difficulties of translating such deceptively simple prose.
At just 137 pages long, Reconciliation manages to pack in a great deal. It unfolds with the following opening sentence: ‘This July 31st marked the first anniversary of the death of my eldest child – she had lived just fifty-six days.’ At this point in the narrative, his second child is just 9 days old, and he is going to visit his daughter’s grave.
We learn from the outset that the narrator, Junkichi, has a difficult relationship with his father: ‘I personally disliked father. This was more than the inescapable tangle of emotion that binds most parents and children, I felt: at the root of our mutual animosity was a basic disharmony. But although I found it relatively easy to talk about these feelings, I found I couldn’t express them on paper. I didn’t want to use my writing to emotionally purge myself.’
I found the protagonist unlikeable, prone as he is to cruel outbursts, most of which are directed toward his wife. He shouts things like: ‘“If I were the kind of man who meekly gave in to whatever his father said, I’d never have married you!”’
The prose style is easy to read, as is the first person perspective. There are some distressing scenes here; there is a lot of detail, for instance, about his daughter’s illness and passing, and later his grandmother’s illness. Reconciliation is filled with rumination, but there is far less emotion on display than I would have expected. There are moments of care and sorrow, as displayed here, but these are few and far between in the narrative: ‘After the baby died, our house suddenly became very lonely. When we took our chairs out to the garden to enjoy the cool night air, the distant cries of forest birds drifted across the lake to us… Moments like this were unbearable.’ After this, however, the narrator recalls the following: ‘… what my wife had feared most was seeing a baby about the age of our dead child. I myself was quite unmoved by such a prospect. Sometimes when we were out together she would slip away without telling me. I would usually find someone there was holding a baby.’
In this translation, the narrator is very matter-of-fact. This is something I often find with literature translated from the Japanese; it is often stoic, in my experience, and not at all effusive. Whilst I found it interesting to read something from this period, and I did find the family dynamic an interesting element, I lacked a lot of sympathy for our protagonist, and was somewhat glad to see the back of him.
The Translator’s Note, written by Goossen, adds a great deal of context, and information about the author himself. Goossen comments that the novella is ‘highly factual, at least on the surface.’ It was written ‘immediately after the culmination of the drama it describes’: the author’s firstborn daughter dying when she was just a baby, the birth of his second child, and the illness of his beloved grandmother.
For Goossen, the novella ‘is charged with an elemental force that renders the distinction between so-called fact and fiction quite irrelevant.’ One of the ‘most striking features’ of this story for its translator is ‘the close relationship between life and art… [It is] a novella about being unable to write, strewn with references to failed or abandoned works.’ He then goes on to speak about the difficulties of translating such deceptively simple prose.
At just 137 pages long, Reconciliation manages to pack in a great deal. It unfolds with the following opening sentence: ‘This July 31st marked the first anniversary of the death of my eldest child – she had lived just fifty-six days.’ At this point in the narrative, his second child is just 9 days old, and he is going to visit his daughter’s grave.
We learn from the outset that the narrator, Junkichi, has a difficult relationship with his father: ‘I personally disliked father. This was more than the inescapable tangle of emotion that binds most parents and children, I felt: at the root of our mutual animosity was a basic disharmony. But although I found it relatively easy to talk about these feelings, I found I couldn’t express them on paper. I didn’t want to use my writing to emotionally purge myself.’
I found the protagonist unlikeable, prone as he is to cruel outbursts, most of which are directed toward his wife. He shouts things like: ‘“If I were the kind of man who meekly gave in to whatever his father said, I’d never have married you!”’
The prose style is easy to read, as is the first person perspective. There are some distressing scenes here; there is a lot of detail, for instance, about his daughter’s illness and passing, and later his grandmother’s illness. Reconciliation is filled with rumination, but there is far less emotion on display than I would have expected. There are moments of care and sorrow, as displayed here, but these are few and far between in the narrative: ‘After the baby died, our house suddenly became very lonely. When we took our chairs out to the garden to enjoy the cool night air, the distant cries of forest birds drifted across the lake to us… Moments like this were unbearable.’ After this, however, the narrator recalls the following: ‘… what my wife had feared most was seeing a baby about the age of our dead child. I myself was quite unmoved by such a prospect. Sometimes when we were out together she would slip away without telling me. I would usually find someone there was holding a baby.’
In this translation, the narrator is very matter-of-fact. This is something I often find with literature translated from the Japanese; it is often stoic, in my experience, and not at all effusive. Whilst I found it interesting to read something from this period, and I did find the family dynamic an interesting element, I lacked a lot of sympathy for our protagonist, and was somewhat glad to see the back of him.
December 29, 2020
This slim book was written in the Japanese ‘I novel’ confessional autobiography genre. It was an introspective look at the author/protagonist's unhappy relationship with his father. Through several close encounters with life and death, the author/protagonist came to re-examine his attitudes and eventually reunited with his family members. While I found the ending too optimistic for the pessimist in me, I appreciated that the author/protagonist bared his soul in this book, and I was glad that the author/protagonist came to find peace and joy in his life. Certainly, life is too short to waste on meaningless misunderstandings and hatred; I hope I can one day have the generosity and open-mindedness to forgive and forget as well as seek reconciliation in my own life.
February 4, 2022
As a big Naoya Shiga fan, I found this fascinating.
February 11, 2022
An insightful look at family dynamics. It was published in 1918 but I think the themes are timeless.
December 3, 2023
Rất hay. Truyện như không truyện, đơn giản mà đi sâu vào lòng người.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews