Japanese Literature discussion

Buddy read thread for various works of Yōko Tawada. We began with Facing the Bridge by Yōko Tawada, tr. Margaret Mitsutani. Start was 15 Oct 2024.

We have added Where Europe Begins and Memoirs of a Polar Bear

The is a follow up on our October 2024 book club selection of Scattered All Over the Earth by Yōko Tawada, English translation by Margaret Mitsutani, located here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Author profile: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

The first story is the interleaved tales of two foreign scholars in Germany. The resemblance ends there, as they have absolutely nothing else in common. Why these two? I have no idea.

The older story of Amo seems to have some kind of plot, but I still find it unsatisfying. It feels like more of an outline than a completed story. The newer story of Tamao has no plot at all.

In the end, I'm disappointed.

Just starting tonight. I am happy to try a different Tawada book after this.
The three stories are:
The Shadow Man
In Front of the Trang Tien Bridge
St. George and the Translator
and
Translators Afterword (I started with that)

I finished the first story, The Shadow Man, and I am confused about what the interplay of the two characters, Amos (Anton Wilhelm Amo) and Tamao, is supposed to mean. Yes, they are both in a country not of their birth and language studying philosophy. There is a light linkage between them late in the short story. One comes as a slave and not by choice. The discussion of soul and body was interesting. I will need to think on this more.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton...

Here is roughly Bill and my thoughts on the first story in Facing the Bridge (extracted from our discord channel):
(view spoiler)[
Jack:
The Amo story expanded would have stood well by itself
Bill:
the second story is starting well. I like the narrator's distorted memories of anti-war protestors
Jack:
I would have rather read about Nana than Tamao. He was weak and boring
Bill:
i hadn't thought of that until you mentioned it
Jack:
I was tired of Tamao’s whining and hoped the Nana thread was going to develop more. I got to the end and said, “what! Wait a minute, this is the perfect time for Nana’s narrative to conclude the short story “
Bill:
they could have traveled together to where Amo went next... like in Scattered :)
Jack:
I can’t easily figure out the timeline but I think facing the bridge was a much earlier work. She may have developed more after that before writing scattered
Bill:
yeah, scattered is quite recent
(hide spoiler)]
---
so we are continuing with the second story in the collection.

Finished a first read of “In Front of the Trang Tien Bridge“. It is full of
miscommunication, alienation, and cultural confusion, all maybe ongoing themes in this collection of short stories.

The monthly read Scattered seems to resolve these themes or, at least, a path to a personal balance. Something that the main character in “In Front of the Trang Tien Bridge“ doesn’t seem to have.

Tawada is the first Japanese author that I have read, and was aware, that writes in both Japanese and German. I was wondering if the original language, Japanese or German, from the same author effected the quality of the end English translation. She has different translators for Japanese and German, which is understandable.
How is the end language different in complexity and readability? I feel sure in this piece, the author is playing with the sentence structures to emphasize the mutation of comprehension in translation.

So, I started with looking at the short story that I am currently reading. It is "Saint George and the Translator" from Facing the Bridge, as translated by Margaret Mitsutani.

After reading more of the short story, i am pretty sure the punctuation, or lack thereof, is intentional. How interesting…

The first full paragraph:
"Gripping my fountain pen as if it were a knife I looked out the window. Dark cacti protruded sporadically from the sandy slope stretching out before me for a distance that might have been far or near I couldn’t tell which before being swallowed up by ominous waves of banana trees with the sea beyond although there was no visible boundary to show where water turned into sky. The sea doesn’t ascend and gradually become sky nor are sea and sky like two countries that meet at the border; in fact they exist entirely independently of each other so it’s odd to regard them as two colors side by side as if looking at a landscape painting. It seems wherever you go the scenery appears exactly like a picture and I hate that. Furthermore as I didn’t come to the Canary Islands for sightseeing it was embarrassing to look out the window and find myself gazing at the ocean like a tourist."

When I looked at the English translation, I felt that it flowed but had lack of some breaks/pauses that would normally be served by commas for clarity and semicolons to break up independent clauses. I wonder if this reflects the nature of the original Japanese and showed intentionality to bring the flavor/flow to English. It is understandable but I would have used commas and semicolons as below for readability and comprehension. She is contrasting this to the work the the MC in the story is trying to translate. A part of that story is:

“… the sacrifices, everywhere, since old times have been, their sin is what, serious, though, to them, congenital, error, undoubtedly, they, not human, are, they, different are, this alone, a misdemeanor, as the gravest offense, is regarded, and, ultimately, only, to be wiped out, particularly, if not to be turned into real coins, agreements for the protection of species, even, cannot lend a hand, supposing, at that time, already, such agreements, existed, because, they, to whatever species, do not belong, their own species, do not have …”

With maybe normal punctuation, the first paragraph would be approximately:

"Gripping my fountain pen as if it were a knife, I looked out the window. Dark cacti protruded sporadically from the sandy slope stretching out before me for a distance that might have been far or near; I couldn’t tell which before being swallowed up by ominous waves of banana trees with the sea beyond, although there was no visible boundary to show where water turned into sky. The sea doesn’t ascend and gradually become sky, nor are sea and sky like two countries that meet at the border; in fact, they exist entirely independently of each other, so it’s odd to regard them as two colors side by side, as if looking at a landscape painting. It seems wherever you go, the scenery appears exactly like a picture, and I hate that. Furthermore, as I didn’t come to the Canary Islands for sightseeing, it was embarrassing to look out the window and find myself gazing at the ocean like a tourist."

It may be conscious choice in the punctuation to match better the flow in Japanese or my choices might be American/not English punctuation.

This is the most interesting short story, so far, as regards the nature of language and transmutation through translation.

I will look at a sample translated from her German work Memoirs of a Polar Bear when I start in a few days.

I would appreciate any thoughts on the above. I have mainly done technical writing and had to be overly aware of readability and comprehension. Style and art were way outside of my scope.

I tried to bold the added punctuation but, I see, it isn't noticeable.
thank you, Jack
(The whole interplay with punctuation has been entertaining.)

Excerpts are from
Facing the Bridge
By Yoko Tawada
This material may be protected by copyright.

In Front of Trang Tien Bridge starts out well, then gets a bit longwinded on Kazuko's identity has a traveler, before moving on to Vietnam. There are some nicely chaotic bits in Vietnam. But Tawada seems to lose her way in the latter part of the story and doesn't connect it back to either of the secondary characters mentioned in the beginning. Then it just ends before reaching its destination.

The story “Saint George and the Translator” was originally called “The Wound in the Alphabet”. Der wunde Punkt im Alphabet by Anne Duden is the book being translated in the third story.

The third (and longest) of the three stories makes up for the other two. Our narrator, stressed and procrastinating, finally finishes her task just before dawn on the day it's due, and then falls asleep when she should be delivering it to the post office.

I choose to read the last bit as the dream she has of trying to get it to the post office, encountering along the way all the people she's met so far on the island. So many elements of that sequence I find in my own dreams that feature hurrying to do something but getting nowhere.

I am continuing will the audio book version of Memoirs of a Polar Bear during walks and drives. Christa Lewis’ narration is quite good.

I am looking forward to reading the short stories in Where Europe Begins. The translators at the beginning write, “Yoko Tawada’s work straddles two continents, two languages and cultures. Born in Tokyo in I960, she moved to Hamburg at the age of 22 and became, simultaneously, a German and a Japanese writer. She has since published a good ten volumes in each language, won numerous literary awards (including Japan's prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1993 and, in 1996, Germany’s Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, the highest honor bestowed upon a foreign-born author), and established herself, in both countries, as one of the most important writers of her generation.

Tawada’s poetry, fiction, essays and plays return again and again to questions of language and culture, the link between national and personal identity. If the languages we speak help define us, what happens to the identity of persons displaced between cultures? “The interesting,” she once said in an interview, “lies in the in-between.” And so her characters are constantly in motion, journeying between countries, languages and modes of being—providing us with “travel narratives” full of glimpses into the interstices of the world in which the structure of all experience is revealed.”

Excerpt From
Where Europe Begins
Yoko Tawada
This material may be protected by copyright.

That line ("It isn't.") on the bottom of page 5 made me laugh out loud. It's the sort of humor I tell myself I'm good at.

The first story did nothing for me. It's the sort of deliberate nonsense that I can't make heads or tails out of, and forget as soon as it passes by.

I hope not all of the volume is like this.

Magic realism? Speculative fiction? I am not sure how to describe the dream like sequences. Pretty confusing but I will think about it to see if I can form any opinion.
…
I think it is an _exercise_ in surrealism. It has dream and fantasy sequences. Sections of the narrative are irrational or have irrational components. There is a transmutation of real to unreal or maybe a portrayal of a stream of unconsciousness or dream state. It could morph into a horror story if it wasn’t so difficult to follow.

Well, on to the next story.

I liked the next short story in the section II, “Reflection”. I know that is not a descriptive answer. I will update this as I reflect on the story. Maybe that is what attracted me, the words are reflections and splinters of story/light…

"Reflection" was interesting, but I'm perhaps a bit too analytical to be able to say I liked it. I can't say the poetic sections worked for me.

I more liked "Spores" and "Canned Foreign" and their comments on language, and "The Talisman" for it's comments on cultural differences (though I suspect more Japanese girls are getting their ears pierced than in the 90s).

"Raisin Eyes" is back in the 'what the heck did I just read? did it mean anything?' category. It makes me feel like I should give up on Tawada after this collection, because so much of what she writes is like this. But maybe I'll change my mind again at the end of this collection.

I am a Japanese poetry fan, so maybe that is part of why I liked reflections as much as I did.
Memoirs of a Polar Bear is my favorite Tawada work so far. I am on the second of the 3 sections in it.
I will keep reading sections of Where Europe Begins, just so I finish it by the end of (my Tawada) month and move on to Mina’s Matchbox.

I have finished the second of the three interrelated stories in Memoirs of a Polar Bear. It is the best Tawada work that I have read so far.

Here are two of Tosca's observations from her memoir. It provides a flavor of the writing and the translation.

"In the time since our first kiss, her human soul had passed bit by bit into my bear body. A human soul turned out to be less romantic than I’d imagined. It was made up primarily of languages — not just ordinary, comprehensible languages, but also many broken shards of language, the shadows of languages, and images that couldn’t turn into words."

"I stand on two legs, my back slightly rounded, my shoulders relaxed. The tiny, adorable human woman standing before me smells sweet as honey. Very slowly, I move my face toward her blue eyes, she places a sugar cube on her short little tongue and holds up her mouth to me. I see the sugar gleaming in the cave of her mouth. Its color reminds me of snow, and I am filled with longing for the far-off North Pole. Then I insert my tongue efficiently but cautiously between the blood-red human lips and extract the radiant lump of sugar."

excerpts from Memoirs of a Polar Bear
by Yoko Tawada, as translated into English by Susan Bernofsky.
This material may be protected by copyright.

In parallel. I completed the short story "Spores" in Where Europe Begins. This is becoming a more difficult read than what I expected, much more surreal than Memoirs of a Polar Bear. I will continue on since I believe that this collection is more out of my reading zone.

Then comes “Canned Foreign”, for me, a brilliant short story. Therefore, I conclude that the problem is that the more surrealist short stories are difficult for me to get into.

I have the same feeling about when Tawada gets too surreal.

It's only not that I dislike poetry. I find there is poetry I like, and poetry I don't understand, and that I am unable to describe the difference.

I just finished the story Where Europe Begins, which doesn't cross the line into 'too surreal'.

agree on "Where Europe Begins" I enjoyed the story and the imagery in it.

Finished Memoirs of a Polar Bear and it was quite good. Glad we had this month to read and discuss Scattered All Over the Earth and other Tawada works.

My last reading of the month was The Bridegroom Was a Dog Tawada was awarded the presitigous Akutagawa Prize (Japan’s equivalent to the Pulitzer) for “The Bridegroom Was a Dog” (犬婿入り, Inu mukoiri) in 1992. Kirkus review describes the short story, it “conjoins its narrator's fablelike tale of an interspecies marriage with her own entrapment in an amusingly similar relationship”. I thought the story was funny, weird, and delightfully rude.