ポトスライムの舟

by Kikuko Tsumura, 津村記久子

The 140th Akutagawa Literary Award winner. Dream can be achieved with little effort. Nazeka dreamed of traveling around the world, but the cost was a year's salary. Instead of giving up, she made it her goal to save enough money for the trip. In Japanese.

Paperback Bunko

First published February 1, 2009

About the author

Kikuko Tsumura (Japanese name: 津村記久子) is a Japanese writer from Osaka. She has won numerous Japanese literary awards, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Noma Literary New Face Prize, the Dazai Osamu Prize, the Kawabata Yasunari Prize, and the Oda Sakunosuke Prize.

Reviews

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

今まで読んだ芥川賞受賞作品の中では、一番心に響いた。
けれど、表題作「ポトスライムの舟」も「十二月の窓辺」も、現実的過ぎて救いがないし閉塞感を感じる。
特に「十二月の窓辺」は、主人公が受けるパワハラがとてもリアルでリアルで、読んでいてい苦しい。
多分、こういう風に心を揺さぶる事が出来るのが、芥川賞受賞作家の力何だろうが、日常生活で疲れてる私には、もう少し楽しいのを読みたいと思ってしまう。

(阿呆な追記：「ポト・スライム」と区切って読んでいたので、「ポルポトと関係あるの？」「スライムって舟になるの」と漠然と考えていた。ちなみに、ポトスは英語ではDevil's ivyらしい。何故だろう。)

[Vj · Rating 4 out of 5]

although the subject matter isn't so "literary" so to speak (stories of inner turmoil with respect to the workplace, questions like what purpose do we work, why do we endure sometimes cruel work environments, etc., midlife crises immediately recognizable to those in the workplace), Tsumura's style definitely is. and by that i mean her writing is complex, at least for a Japanese language amateur like me. if i had to compare, i'd say Tsumura is both similar and very dissimilar to early Kawakami or Usami Rin's 推し、燃ゆ: similar in the rambling, stream-of-conscious sense, dissimilar in that Tsumura writes in the third-person, which confounds the stream-of-consciousness rambling even more. it turns out third-person limited observations comparing the protagonist with another person are even harder to parse in japanese. who would've thought? but i think this works to the benefit of the stories, since the core of these two stories is the confusion of the working life. paragraphs are dense with lines of dialogue, oftentimes unbracketed, snuck in. ポトスライムの舟 being her 7th published book, it's very clear her style was incredibly refined at this point. and just as much, her chosen imagery—the endlessly propagating pothos lime in the title story, Togano Tower in the omake—is surprisingly straightforward for an Akutagawa prize winner without ever being ham-fisted. untranslated at the time of writing, which is a shame, since i think these stories are more relevant now than ever. not to mention the fact that only one of her many books has been translated, despite being multiply decorated in the Japanese literary world.