Two Idas

ふたりのイーダ (futari no īda, Two Idas, 1969) is a children's book by MATSUTANI Miyoko ( 松谷みよ子).

While their mother goes on an assignment to Kyushu, she leaves Naoki and almost three year old Yuuko with their grandparents in the little castle town of Hanaura. Hanaura is in western Japan, on the coast of the Seto Inland Sea, a location that will become relevant later in the novel. The family sometimes call Yuuko Ida, a nickname that Naoki gave her from a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.

On the first night in this grandparents' house, Naoki sneaks out to explore.

Naoki did not know how long he had been standing next to the castle moat. His attention was suddenly wakened as he heard the clatter, clatter sound of someone passing by near his feet. At the same time he heard a low murmur, "Gone, gone, can't find her ....., gone."

Although the voice was low and hoarse, it could be heard from down by his feet. Shocked Naoki looked around below him. It was a chair. It was a small - yes, about the size that would just fit Yuuko if she sat down in it - backed, round wooden chair. The chair was walking, clatter, clatter, along the white path at the edge of the the moat, dragging its legs with each step.

The next day Naoki discovers an abandoned house in the woods, and in it the chair from the night before. When Yuuko visits the house, she seems strangely at home there; and the chair thinks that it recognises her as the Ida it knew. But whoever that Ida was must have vanished long ago. Angry at the chair's claims on his sister, Naoki tries to find out what had happened to the people living in the house; but he also starts to wonder whether his Yuuko might be the reincarnation of the Ida that the chair knew.

A visit to Hiroshima suggests what may have happened to the family. A young woman from the town takes Naoki with her to a memorial ceremony for the victims; and Naoki learns about the events that he had only vaguely heard of before.

In this way the fantasy element of the book winds into a story of the atom bomb. The two fit together a little oddly. The chair's sentience is not really motivated; but its character can be seen as a way of approaching the feeling of being unable be come to terms a loss of this kind.

[UPDATE: I forgot to check the Japan Foundation's Translation Database before writing this review. It turns out there is an English translation, Paula Bush, Two Little Girls Called Iida, Kodanasha International, 1985.]

Momo and Akane

I wrote about the first books in this series by MATSUTANI Miyoko (松谷みよ子) two years ago. As then, the volume I've just been reading contains two separate books, published together in one paperback. The first モモちゃんとアカネちゃん (Momo chan to Akane chan, Momo and Akane, 1974) gives its title to the paperback reprint, the second is the slightly later, ちいさいアカネちゃん (chiisai Akane chan, Little Akane, 1978). The stories follow little Momo, who is just entering primary school at the start of the first book, and the rest of the family, her baby sister Akane, her mother and father, and the cat Pū. Akane, who goes from a newborn baby to a two year old by the second book, gets a little more attention than Momo.

The books are made up of linked short stories, each complete in themselves, but often preparing later developments. Almost all contain some element of fantasy; but the heart of the story is not fantasy but the depiction of life in a modern Japanese family. The fantasy element serves as metaphor or other comment on some aspect of family life, or reflects the way that a young child sees the world. The style is often whimsical, although the subject matter is not always so light.

Perhaps because of her sickness, mama's eyesight seemed to have gone wrong. Sometimes papa would be visible, sometimes not. It was like this.

Papa came home in the evening. 

Trudge, trudge.

Mama recognised papa's footsteps straight away.

Ring, ring, the doorbell rang, and mama flew out to open it. But papa was not standing there. All there was was papa's shoes.

That was it. Mama gazed at the shoes not knowing what to do. How on earth was she to give an evening meal to shoes? It would be ridiculous to say, "The bath is ready" to shoes. All mama could do was wipe the dust off the shoes, rub in shoe cream and polish them with a rag. She polished them so long that they sparkled. Mama's tears dropped onto them.

The next morning the shoes left the house again.

 Not surprisingly, the parents separate towards the end of Momo and Akane; and Little Akane follows mama, Momo and Akane getting by in a smaller house with mama trying to manage work and family alone.

The fantastic elements of the stories mostly comes from the attribution of human understanding to animals or inanimate objects (like the clumsily knitted baby socks that Akane's mother made while she was pregnant). Occasionally more familiar figures appear, both western (Santa Claus) and Japanese.  Here Momo and Akane have been thrown off the new red sledge that their grandfather made for them.

Just below them there was a deep ravine.

"There it is, the sledge, there it is."

When Momo peered in the direction that Akane was pointing, she saw a figure wearing a white kimono with long white hair. Even so, it was a young woman. She was standing by the sledge on the floor of the valley. 

"Akane." Momo clasped Akane to her.

"Thank you ..... Thank you for the red sledge. I'd have liked to get you two as well, to take you to my place with me; but since you gave me the sledge, I'll let you off ....."

Ho ho ho ho ho, the laughing voice echoed, hyuuh, the wind blew.  The woman raised her hand, and from around it snow drifted in spiralling clouds.

  
The general trend of the books is optimistic, while still showing some of the sadness built into the experience of family life and growing up.

According to the Japan Foundation's Books in Translation database, there is a translation of the first of these books, モモちゃんとアカネちゃん, as Momo-chan and Akane-chan by M. McCandless (Kodansha International, 1987).
  

Taro the Dragon Boy (film)

When I wrote about the children's book, Taro the Dragon Boy by MATSUTANI Miyoko, I was aware of the 1979 film; but I'm too much of a miser to pay the 25 Euros that a DVD cost back then. Happily the price went down to something more affordable, and I thought I'd write another post comparing film and book.

To recap a little of what I wrote in the earlier post, the book combines folk tale elements to make a larger adventure story. Taro is a lazy, greedy, thoughtless child raised by his poor and self sacrificing grandmother in a mountain district of Japan. He is also strong, brave and good natured, spending his time playing with his friends, the animals of the surrounding forests. (Here he is teaching them sumo wrestling.)

When a friend is kidnapped he sets out to rescue her, and success in this leads to a further search, to find his mother, who had been transformed into a dragon.

The most striking thing about the film is how closely it follows the book. Most film adaptations diverge significantly from their source material, with close correspondences mostly found only in the earlier scenes; but Taro the Dragon Boy stays close to the original from beginning to end. The story makes a slightly different impression in the different media. Both are episodic; but while the two larger plot arcs that the book divides into are still present in the film, the story seems to flow forward more easily and the division is not so strongly felt.

The visual style of the film is strongly influenced by the traditional ink wash painting that Japan learnt from China.

The background landscapes are all done in this style, and while the characters are drawn in a more typical animation style, their colours are also toned down to fit the scenery.

You probably anticipate that a story that starts with a lazy and thoughtless protagonist will have moral lessons about the value of hard work and consideration for others. In a sense, it does. Here is Taro after working for months for a manipulative landowner, taking the pay she reluctantly offers him, as much rice as he can carry (which he then distributes to poor villagers).

But the account of the hero's growth does not feel moralising. We are not invited so much to condemn the earlier version of the character as to share his realisation of the harshness of the world he lives in and desire to change it.

Little Momo

The book pictured is actually a bunko edition (2011) containing what was originally two books by  松谷みよ子 (MATSUTANI Miyoko), ちいさいモモちゃん (Chiisai Momo chan, Little Momo, 1964) and モモちゃんとプー (Momo chan to Pū, Momo and Pū, 1974). These are the first in a series of books about a little girl called Momo and her family: mama, papa, the cat Pū, and at the end of the second book the new baby Akane. The books are made up of linked short stories aimed at young readers (or listeners), but not as young as the main character, who goes from birth to three years old in the first book, from three to four in the second. I'm not sure why a book like this would be in bunko format (which are printed with few furigana and so probably unreadable for a younger child). You sometimes see children's books in this format, shelved among the adult novels, but they're mostly books for slightly older children, who may well be able to read them even without extra help. Either the publishers expect parents to read it aloud or they see a market in people nostalgically revisiting the books of their childhood.

It's a little hard to characterise the stories. The narrator uses a speaking voice, mostly close to written Japanese, but with occasional features of spoken Japanese, particularly the particle ね, a question particle, a bit like a parenthetic "you see?" "hmm?", which looks for the reader's or listener's agreement. All the stories have an element of fantasy, so that animals or inanimate objects may talk or in other ways show human characteristics. This is a bit like A.A. Milne's "Winnie the Pooh" stories; but the fantasy is only part of the Momo stories. The focus is on family life and the development from baby to child. The animism is perhaps a view of how small children see the world around them (or are encouraged to see it by their parents). In this the book is a bit like Richard Jefferies' Wood Magic, but without the single minded concentration on the viewpoint of a single solitary child that that has. 

The stories are mostly light, cheerful and short (five or six pages long); but some of the longer ones are ready to look at darker sides of life too. Here, for instance is part of a dream that the mother has a little before Akane is born.

Mama was trudging across a plain. Lead-grey clouds hung low over it. The plain was withered. Withered like that, you would expect it to have the colour of dead grass; but, perhaps because of the low hanging lead-grey cloud, the whole plain too was sunk in the same lead-grey.

Sometimes Mama would stop walking and look around. An icy wind blew past. But the damp layers of lead-grey cloud did not move, they just hung there darkly.

Mama sighed and started walking again with heavy steps. It's so dark, and lonely too, as if everything had died out, no sound anywhere .....

Did the baby die, perhaps? When I fell on the stairs, did it die perhaps? That's it, it died. I mean, it's so dark here. Like litter blown this way and that in the wind, mama stood swaying. That's it, the baby died .....

At that moment from a crack in the clouds one ray of light fell on the plain. And there where the light fell something was shining brightly.

"I wonder what that is ....."

The Japan Foundation website tells me that both books have an English translation: Margi Haas, Little Momo Chan (Kodansha International, 1985), Christopher Holmes, Momo Chan and Poo (Kodansha International 1986).

[Update 19.5.14: When I first put this up, I had (I can't imagine how) strangely misread, and so mistranslated a word in the quoted text above. Sorry about that.]

Taro the Dragon Boy

Most of the books I read don't have translations I could read instead. But  龍の子太郎　(Tatsu no kotarou), the 1960 children's novel by MATSUTANI Miyoko (松谷みよ子 1926-), seems to have translations in both English and German. I've taken the post title from the English translation (which I haven't read). It's another book aimed at younger readers, a story told in folktale style and based on elements of various Japanese folktales. Probably most people starting on Japanese at some point read some version of the more famous Japanese children's folktales like Momotarou and Issunboushi. A full length novel on the same sort of material is likely to be more of a challenge. Still, it's a fairly easy book to read, though the dialogue might occasionally demand some experience (or guessing).

Tarou is a common boy's name or part of a name in folktales. Tatsu no ko means dragon's child and was added to Tarou's name by the village children, mocking the birthmarks on his body, which looked like a dragon's scales. Tarou is an orphan, cared for by his grandmother, who tirelessly works in the fields to provide for him, while he goes playing in the hills with the wild animals. One day, a drum-playing red demon kidnaps Tarou's friend Aya, a flute-playing girl. Tarou sets off to get her back. And this is the start of a series of adventures that will lead him to find his mother, who, it turns out, is not dead, but transformed into a dragon.

Putting together folktale type stories to make a larger story sounds easy enough. But it works very well here. Like The Hobbit, the episodic story turns out to add up to much more than the various parts. And it's quite subtly done. As you read, you enjoy the lively folktale style and scenes; but when you get to the end, you see where the story was heading, although there was no didactic over-emphasis along the way.

The story has been dramatised several times. There's a 1979 cartoon, which is available in Germany at least (as Taro Der Drachenjunge) and seems to be well regarded. I haven't seen it yet, as it currently costs 25 Euros. (Germany is like Japan in this respect: they reckon the fans will pay what they're asked.)