Book Around the Corner

Shojo Kakei (1959) and Ishi no Bisho (1962). French titles: La jeune fille suppliciée sur une étagère / Le sourire des pierres.

I just read two short stories by Akira Yoshimura; they are published together as both have death as a theme but I’ll review them separately.

Shojo Kakei is a stunning story. The French title means The Young Girl Tortured on a Shelf. Mieko is 16 and she just died. Her soul hovers over her corpse and relates her impressions. She’s going to be our narrator.

She sees two men coming to her parents’ poor lodgings and giving her mother an envelope full of money. Her mother has sold her corpse to the local hospital where it will be used by students or for scientific experiment. Mieko describes what happens to her corpse, the journey to the hospital and how they dispose of her body. Meanwhile Mieko unfolds her life and lets us know who she was and how she was led to that untimely death.

Honestly, it was painful to read. I needed to block out the gory images Yoshimura conjured up in my mind when Mieko relates how hospital employees cut her body or treat it with chemical products. It would have been unbearable otherwise. That meant opening my mind to harmless descriptions of the streets and the settings and shutting it in a moment when it became too gory. I wonder if a Western writer could have written such a story. It’s so chilling and it shows a totally different approach to death than in Western countries (which I knew, but still)

Yoshimura writes beautifully. In the first pages, Mieko describes death as an access to extra sensitivity. She hears, feels, smells, sees better, grasping details in her surroundings that were imperceptible to her when she was alive. It’s an interesting way of imagining death.

In the second story, Ishi no Bisho, death is also a major theme. The French title means The smile of stones. Eichi lives in Tôkyô near a cemetery. When he was a child, he befriended with Sone and they used to play among the tombstones. Then Sone vanished and they never met again until Eichi stumbles upon him at the university. Sone asks Eichi to travel with him to the Island of Sado where he has a job for the two of them. Sone steals statues in historical cemeteries and sells them to antique dealers.

Death is everywhere in this story. It’s a link between Eichi and Sone as they were together when they discovered the corpse of a woman who had hung herself in the cemetery when they were children. Sone makes a living out of death, selling these statues. Sone is also fascinated by death in an unhealthy manner: he tends to persuade his girl-friends to commit suicide with him. Death is also present in Eichi’s unnamed sister. She was married but her in-laws sent her back home after they discovered she was infertile. Eichi’s sister sews clothes for an orphanage, spending her time and energy to help children whose parents are dead. On a more symbolical level, her womb is dead too, she’ll never bear a child. It’s the death of her dreams as a mother and it kills any chance to remarry.

After reading these two short stories, I have to admit that I struggle with Japanese literature mostly because I don’t know much about the customs of this country. I should read a non-fiction book, but that’s not my forte. I’m a bit angry at the publisher, actually. I enjoy books published by Actes Sud, they always select excellent writers. I just wish they added more to the book than just the text and scarce notes from the translator. I longed to read a foreword or footnotes with explanation about the vision of death in the Japanese society. It would have helped. I’m now thinking about trying Japanese literature in English provided that the English editions are more educational. Otherwise, I have the feeling I’ll never improve my level of reading in Japanese literature.