Wednesday 13 June 2012

All She Was Worth

Miyuki Miyabe, 1992 [Alfred Birnbaum, 1996]
(May 2012)



I don’t usually read all that many crime books (except when I do). This one was almost an impulse purchase. I’m lucky enough to work in a city which has a few decent sized department stores with reasonable selections of English language books, so I’ll spend the occasional lunch-hour seeing what’s available, and resisting the temptation to buy them all.

Over recent years there have been a few publishers putting out more and more Japanese stuff in translation. I suppose the popularity of Haruki Murakami is a large part of it, but it does get slightly annoying when every Japanese author is compared to him simply on the basis of nationality, no matter how ill-deserved the comparison might otherwise be.

That said, if it’s the price to pay for getting more stuff out there, it’s no great hardship. Especially genre stuff. It should be clear by now that I’m no genre snob, almost the reverse. A lot of ‘Literary Fiction’ comes across as all style and no substance; elegant turns-of-phrase built on foundations of tedium and petty introspection. I couldn’t give a shit about how the middle-class piano tutor feels when she discovers her dead mother’s affair with the economics lecturer who was her father’s best friend from school. For example.

And for a long time it was either just the Japanese equivalents of this or the ‘classics’ that were available in translation. The middle-class shamisen tutor who discovers her etc etc and so on. This is one of the world’s great bibliophile cultures. It’s the only place where printed newspapers' circulations aren't in complete free-fall and book stores are everywhere; glorious, groaning cathedrals to the written word. It would, I feel, be a mistake to judge the entirety of Japanese Literature on what has until recently been available in translation, for the same reason it’d be a mistake to judge English Literature solely on Dickens and Ian McEwan.

So the existence and availability of the more ‘pulpy’ end of the spectrum is to be applauded, but it would be unfair to describe this book as pulp. Even though at heart it’s an almost quaintly traditional police procedural. Woman disappears, man tries to find her. What previously hidden skeletons could be lurking in her closet?

It’s atmospheric and fairly well paced, despite the occasional overly detailed explanation regarding bankruptcies and the family-register system. These are easily forgiven though, seeing as it’s something of an exploration into identity and personal and social responsibility in ‘modern’ Japan. I use quote marks because this book is two decades old, and many of the changes it saw coming are still just around the corner. Supposedly. The day women stop “reach[ing] their late twenties and find they’re still cleaning up the office and making tea,” is still almost here, the antiquated and ‘dead weight’ family register system is still completely unfit for purpose and in dire need of change, and attitudes towards fiscal responsibility remain, “a gray zone where the authorities tend to say, ‘Yeah, there are bad thing going on, but let’s not be too quick to point any fingers.’”

My personal theory is that the Lost Decades were social and cultural as well as economic. Japan has essentially been in a holding pattern since the Bubble burst. This book was written just after that and while the occasional change does jump out at you (the protagonist has to camp in a café to use the payphone, and remarks on the novelty of a businessman using a mobile), what’s really jarring is the changes that haven’t happened. I want to say, ‘haven’t happened yet,’ but given it’s been twenty years that ‘yet’ feels sadly redundant.


9 comments:

  1. It's pretty sad that these changes haven't happened.

    Personally I'd love to read some history that is Japanese history translated instead of books written by whities with their own interpretation of events.

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    1. I'd second that. A bit more non-fiction in translation would definitely be appreciated. Can't imagine there's much of a market for it though, sadly.

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  2. "Japan has essentially been in a holding pattern since the Bubble burst." Yes!

    I was first here in '93, not long after 'the Bubble' burst, and this country has changed very little in the important ways since that time. Many social changes have economic necessity at their root. Consider the status of women in 'the West': given economic freedoms during the World Wars when their labour was needed, sent back to the kitchens immediately afterwards so that returning vets would not get radicalized by unemployment, let back to work in the '70s so that their wages could inflate the housing markets. Feminists have been used more by latent interests than they have ever got from them.

    What's that got to do with Japan? Is it any wonder women got more opportunities during an economic bubble here, and got no more after it burst. It's an old pattern.

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    1. Was it Civ II where one of the main industrial warfare techs unlocked the 'Emancipation' wonder? Something like that. I know it's only a computer game, but it's the first time I remember seeing that link being made so explicitly.

      On a bigger scale, there's a strong argument that the Black Death ended feudalism and really kick started capitalism, as it shifted power to the providers of labour. Yeah, old as sin, that pattern.

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  4. "The day women stop “reach[ing] their late twenties and find they’re still cleaning up the office and making tea,” is still almost here,"

    Oh...your in a "progressive" prefecture I see....that day is not anywhere near "almost here" over here ;)

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    1. Yep. Very progressive. So progressive, in fact, that we have both sarcastic "quote marks" and ironic italics. The joys of typesetting will never cease...

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  5. And here I thought my little smile/wink symbol at the end was gonna give my sarcasm away. :) (smile without wink added at end of sentence for a 2nd try)

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    1. But doesn't the smiley cancel out the quote marks? Or is the effect cumulative? It's all jut so "confusing" ;) :) :p

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