Train Readings, Running Coincidences

Recently, I'm reading quite a lot in the train on my way to work. Coincidentally, the last three books I've read are somehow related with Japan. I have only bought one, by the way, which means the rest of them came to me as a present and, therefore, I couldn't chose.

The first one was a present from my friend JM. He visited me in Japan and has always been interested in the country. Hopefully, he's not an otaku nor one of these newbies that can't say the difference between a fake Japanese restaurant and a real one. His other passion is economy and the book, "The Bubble Economy", is about the Japanese bubble and its burst on the 90's. This book is like reading into the future of Spanish economy. I'll finish it within this week.

When I came back from Japan in October 2008, I felt kind of alone in Valencia, missing Japan somehow, so I bought Murakami's "Norwegian Wood", in English. It turned out that I got to know very nice people there and in short I literally had no time to read at all. Besides, the book was not that interesting: a long mental jerk-off of a 20-ager explaining how he masturbates and fucks airhead girls and falls in love with one who is totally nuts. I know that story. Besides, his prose is dull and he seems just to be interested in the description of girls' clothes and weather, while praising himself and showing off the usual phony European pose among Japanese college students pretending to be different from the herd. At the end, everybody suicide, which is very Japanese. I finished the book before Christmas. The best chapter, the last one.
The last book, Mishima's "Thirst for Love " (Ai no Kawaki), has a personal side story. I'm teaching Spanish to my beloved Ch. but she wanted to read a book by herself. I looked for some bilingual books at "La Casa del Llibre" (the Zara of books) but didn't find any interesting one (only Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide??? WTF!!). So, she went to FNAC in Pl. Catalunya and found that one, in Spanish. She bought it because it happened in Osaka. It is funny to read in Spanish about places I know pretty well in Japan, like when someone talks about your relatives without knowing it. The book was far to difficult for her, so she gave it to me saying "you gotta read it and tell me the story". "Sir, yes, Sir!", and I read the book.

It was a punch in my stomach. It happens in Osaka right after the WWII. Etsuko, a young widow, is living with her in-laws in a country house on the outskirts of the city, in Maidemmura, near Okamachi station. She hides her cruelty and sadism behind a mask of calm and elegance. Her husband had been cheating on her as a rule, so she found an extreme pleasure watching him dying from typhoid fever. In Maidemmura, she secretly falls in love with Saburo, a young servant while becoming a kind of mistress of Yakiichi, her father-in-law. Her sadism lies in the pleasure she obtains from her jealousy, since Saburo doesn't give a fig about her, and the repulsion of being possessed by old Yakiichi. This keeps her alive, she says. At the end, her jealousy becomes madness when she discovers a young maid got pregnant from Saburo, and abruptly kills him in the most virulent and bloody way. "Nobody has the right to hurt me!", she claims.

I've got to say that, despite the fact I'm not very comfortable at the historical figure of Yukio Mishima and the translation into Spanish is a little dated, to me, Mishima is a superior writer than Murakami. His characters are more complex and his prose, far more powerful. However, there is an excess of trivial bucolic comparisons and the whole book, which in case of being originally an English or Spanish novel would have been a tragedy in 500 pages with all sort of nasty details, is too succinct, being both signs of either Japanese literature style or a bad translation.

The irony was that of unintentionally getting from Ch. such a book, where the main character's name and origin are exactly the same as these of the despicable girl. I don't believe in coincidences, but unfortunately this was a big one. Both women are equally detestable and selfish, and by unconsciously giving me that book, Ch. clearly stated that in front of my face. Thanks!