A Big 1st Year and a Little 2nd Year

大きい1年生と 小さな2年生 (ookii ichinensei to chiisana ninensei, A Big 1st Year and a Little 2nd Year, 1970) is a children's book by FURUTA Taruhi (古田足日, 1927-2014). The title characters are in their first and second years of elementary school (小学校, shougakkou), so probably six and seven years old respectively. The book too is clearly aimed at relatively young readers.

Akiyo and Mariko are the two smallest children in the second year, small enough to be mistaken for kindergarten children; and of the two Akiyo is just slightly smaller. She had somehow had the idea that, since second years are taller than first years, she would get taller at the start of the new school year (which is also the start of the book). For all her small stature, she is tough and self confident, not shy of quarrels with other children. Her friend Mariko, by contrast, is quiet, calm and a little detached. Masaya, a new first year, whose family has just moved to a house near Akiyo's, is large enough that people sometimes think he is a third year; but his character is the exact opposite to Akiyo's, anxious to the point of cowardice.

The elementary school that Masaya and Akiyo walked to was on top of a hill. There were apartment blocks on the high ground. Akiyo's friend, Mariko Fujioka, lived in one of them. The school was just beyond the apartment blocks.

From Masaya's house to the school and the apartment blocks, there were two routes. One was a broad road up the hill, with lots of traffic. The other, the one that Masaya was now walking, was a narrow path up between two cliff faces.

On the way to the school entrance ceremony, Masaya's mother had taken him up the broad road, but after the ceremony, the teacher had said, 'The broad road with all that traffic is dangerous. The way you should take to school is the track through the cliffs.'

So when it was time to go back, mother said, 'Masaya, this time let's go by the cliff way.'

'No. I don't want to go that way,' Masaya said to his mother with a scared face.

'You're a first year now, Masaya, big enough to be taken for a third year. If you can't manage something like that path! The teacher told you that was the way you should take to school.'

Mother gripped Masaya's hand tightly and pulled him along. Masaya was dragged along, almost crying.

That was why Masaya was walking along the cliff route; but he was clinging tightly to his mother, because it was so scary.

It wasn't just narrow, it was dark and there were steep cliffs of red earth on either side, topped  with thick woods. In the midst of those woods, there were huge pine trees that you could see from Masaya's house, and in their tops crows would call, 'Caw, caw' from time to time.

Akiyo quarrels with Masaya on their first meeting, but they soon become more friendly; and Masaya comes to depend on the fearless Akiyo a little too much. Worried about losing her friendship, he starts to consider how he can become braver. 

This a simple story of real life, narrated in a simple style for young children. For all its simplicity, I think it does a very good job of depicting the friendship at the heart of the story, and also in communicating a sense of place, in this country district on the outskirts of Tokyo. And although the events that make up the plot are never far from the minor incidents that make up normal life, the story's progress still feels very satisfactory.

Dr. Poppen's Sunday

ぽっぺん先生の日曜日 (Poppen sensei no nichiyoubi, Dr. Poppen's Sunday, 1973) is a children's book by FUNAKAZI Yoshihiko (舟崎克彦, 1945-2015). It's a comical fantasy story in the tradition of Alice in Wonderland, but with an adult protagonist, the biology lecture Poppen, who gets trapped in a riddle book and must go through all the pages to find his way back to the outside world.

Children's stories with adult protagonists are rare; and when they do occur, the adult characters are mostly young attractive figures with which a child might want to identify. Poppen wears slippers everywhere, having gotten into the habit after a foot injury. He goes through this story dressed in a walking club track suit. He's not especially brilliant or courageous. On the other hand, he manages to find his way through the world he has been thrown into well enough. When he is first transported into the book, he deduces that that is what has happened immediately, and generally manages to keep his equanimity throughout the subsequent adventures.

Many of the characters he meets are animals, but their behaviour is often human, or at least different from what Poppen's knowledge of biology might tell him. Still his background gives a particular flavour to the narration, with a more informed description of the plants and animals Poppen sees. A few chapters offer non animal protagonists, notably one in which Poppen finds his way about a town populated by cast off clothes which go about performing the roles (policeman, sweetcorn seller etc.) that their wearers would, if they existed.

To progress through the book he must solve each page's riddle, and before that he must find out what the riddle is. This makes the book a little like Alice Through the Looking Glass with its chess move progression. The first chapters establish the narrative formula; but later chapters, especially towards the end throw in unexpected variations on the pattern.

The level of danger and feelings of threat in the story are generally fairly mild; and the tone is generally humorous, with comedy coming from the absurdity of the fantasy world or from mild satire of Poppen's own life outside it.

Kurt the Wednesday Child

I've already reviewed several books by 大井三重子 (OOI Mieko), the writer of  the collection of children's stories, 水曜日のクルト (suiyoubi no Kuruto, Kurt of Wednesday, 1961); but they were books under a different name and in a different character, as the postwar detective story writer NIKI Etsuko. She had been trying to establish herself as a children's writer when she won the Edogawa Rampo prize for her first detective novel 猫は知っていた (The Cat Knew, 1957), a genre with which she had more success. The stories gathered in this collection are fairy tale type fantasies of various kinds.

The title story, 'Kurt the Wednesday Child', is not one of the strongest, in my opinion. A children's illustrator after meeting a young boy on a Wednesday mysteriously loses items and as mysteriously regains them, while losing other ones. Like all the stories in the collection it is engagingly narrated and inventive; but the invention here is very diffuse, a bundle of different ideas that don't really connect. The style felt a little like a dilute version of MIYAZAWA Kenji's style in the stories in 注文の多い料理店 (chuumon no ooi ryouriten, The Restaurant of Many Orders, 1924).

The second story, 'The Memoir Art Gallery', is a well worked out story that perhaps does not add up to much more than its central, not very surprising, metaphor. The main character, a young boy, finds an art gallery that anyone can visit, but each visitor can only enter one room. The paintings in that gallery all depict people and incidents important to the visitor, whether welcome or not.

The third, 'The Life of a Puddle', is another piece that somewhat predictably follows a familiar genre, in this case the slightly moralising narration of the life of an inanimate object.

'The Story of the Mysterious Water Ladle' is a long and quite lively story of a good hearted cobbler, who is given a magical ladle by a homeless wanderer he invites in. The cobbler wants to give shoes to the poor children in his neighbourhood, but the pair he has just made for one boy is the first he has been able to afford to make in months. The stranger has him plant the shoes, then water them with the ladle. The next day a tree with shoes instead of fruit is growing in the garden. The cobbler plants hat trees and coat trees to make presents for his neighbours, but attracts the attention of the country's king, who confiscates the ladle and finds a horrible new use for it. The ideas in the story are again very familiar, but they combine well to make an interesting story with unexpected plot developments. In this story, Ooi makes the narrator a character, a grandfather visiting his grandchildren.

Unlike the cheerful stories that make up most of the collection, 'The Blood Coloured Cloud' is an unhappy story about war. From the harbour wall a girl sends a piece of paper out towards the horizon where she can see a pink cloud. On the paper she had written 'To the person beneath the pink cloud, please be my friend, Lily.' One day a little sea plane arrives with a boy who had found the letter, a cadet in the neighbouring country's airforce; but on the same day trucks roll through the town with loudspeakers announcing the start of hostilities with that country. Soon Lily's two brothers are called up to fight. This is clearly a more personal story (the author lost one brother in the second world war).

'The Conserve Jars of Things that Are or Could Be' returns to more whimsical magic. An old witch rewards a shopkeeper by making a set of jamjars which contain anything he or his family might need. When they have fulfilled all their needs they start giving away the remaining jars to customers. A girl from the neighbouring town makes friends with a rich invalid boy when his family accidentally leave him unattended and she shows him a nearby wood where they can gather acorns. Much later, learning that the boy is expected to die, she sets off to walk to the shop, hoping to give him one of the magic jars; but there is now only one left, which no other customer had wanted to take.

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.]

Sheltering from Rain under the Slide

雨やどりはすべり台の下で　(amayadori ha suberidai no shita de, Sheltering from Rain under the Slide, 1984) is a children's book by OKADA Jun (岡田淳).

A sudden rain storm makes a group of primary school children break off their baseball game and shelter under the large slide in the park in front of the block of flats where they all live. One of them suggests that the rain had been magically caused by Mr Amamori, who had been walking by at that moment and opened his umbrella a moment before the unexpected rain arrived. Amamori is an apparently unemployed middle aged man, who avoids contact with other people in the building. Another child reacts to the other's suspicion that Amamori was a wizard.

"You said, back then, I guess he really is a wizard, didn't you? 'Really is' means there was something before this?"

"What? Well, ......" Ichirou, playing with the rubber ball, glanced at Kyouko. "Just, somehow or other," he dodged the question.

Teruo didn't ask any more, but went on, "The truth is, when I heard you say 'wizard', it was a surprise. What I mean is, there was a time when I wondered whether he wasn't a wizard."

Everyone looked at Teruo in shock. Two or three had their mouths hanging open. Teruo went on, "The rain doesn't look like letting up yet, so perhaps you'll listen to my story."

One after the other the children tell stories of their experiences, all with a larger or smaller magical element, and all featuring Mr Amamori, as the apparent worker of the magic. The children are all of different ages (from 6 to 12) and the different stories reflect their different characters. Some of the stories are poetic fairy tales, others are closer to fantasies reflecting the wishes of the narrators. Readers can read the stories as stories, and also as reflections of the different storytellers. It is never stated as such, but there are hints that allow us to interpret the stories, if we want, not as a narrative of real events, but as a collaborative story telling competition. At the end, the final story puts a different perspective on the figure of Amamori, who is moving out that day.

The Demon's Bridge

鬼の橋 (oni no hashi, The Demon's Bridge, 1998) is a children's book by ITOU Yuu　(伊藤遊, born 1959). The story is set in the Heian period, in the early days of Kyoto, where the hero Takamura is the teenage son of a high ranking civil servant.

Takamura had had a much loved younger sister, who had died playing hide and seek with him in an abandoned temple. For various reasons, Takamura blames himself: they were not supposed to go to the temple; he knew his sister hated playing hide and seek, but insisted; when he could not find her, he went away thinking she had run home. The story starts as Takamura revisits the temple where his sister had been found, fallen into a well.

Crossing the bridge was forbidden. Takamura hesitated a moment, still gazing at the far side, then with a kick to the bridge's railing, he set off purposefully over the bridge.

'What are you playing at?' a girl came out from under the bridge and shouted up at Takamura, her eyebrows raised in anger. Apparently that was not enough for her. She sprinted up the bank. Takamura stopped in confusion and looked towards her.

'It was you, wasn't it, who kicked the bridge?'

Her rolled up sleeves showed horribly thin arms. The fingers of her hands were clenched and she was glaring at Takamura with eyes that blazed with anger. He looked perplexed at this girl, who hardly came up to his shoulder.

'Apologise!'

'Apologise?'

The child is Akona, the daughter of a bridge builder, who had died while working on this bridge. Now she lives as a homeless orphan under the bridge that he built.

But there is another bridge in the story, the bridge that the souls of the dead have to cross. In his regret at his sister's death, Takamura finds himself in a place that is the threshold to the world that the dead go to. A huge bridge spans an icy river.

'If I cross this, where would I get to?' he wondered.

Somewhere in his heart he could hear a voice saying 'Better not.' He ignored that and set off slowly to cross the bridge. At that moment, he felt like whatever fate might be waiting for him, there was no reason for him to fear it. Let it happen as it happens, a feeling of throwing everything away. Anyway, walking along the side of this river, there was no goal for him to head towards.

As he kept walking on, however far he walked, no end appeared. The far side never came in sight.

'I wonder how far I've come by now?'

Takamura stopped and glanced back; as he did so, the shock stopped his breath.

There was a demon standing there.

The demons in this world are the guides to the souls of the dead; but they see the living as food.

The story is very episodic, with encounters with supernatural beings in Kyoto and in the spirit world. Through various inconclusive adventures, the various characters (particularly Takamura, Akona and the demonlike Hitenmaru, who saves Akona's bridge when a flood threatens to destroy it) move slowly forward. In particular Takamaru learns to move on from his grief and guilt and to accept adult responsibilities.

The Deer King

鹿の王 (shika no ou, The Deer King, 2014) is a fantasy novel by UEHASHI Nahoko (上橋菜穂子, born 1962). Uehashi is best known for her fantasy series, 精霊の守り人 (seirei no moribito, Guardian of the Spirit), which was the basis for a successful anime series and more recently for a live action television series. The first books of the series have an English translation, by Cathy Hirano (Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, 2008 and Moribito II: Guardian of the Darkness, 2009). My only knowledge of that is from watching the anime series (and one episode in the middle of the live action series), but if that is anything to go by, The Deer King has a lot in common with Guardian of the Spirit. Fantastic elements are an important part of the narrative, but for much of the time we are nearer to (pseudo-)historical fiction. A variety of characters are at work in the story, most of them loyally serving some higher interest or some ideological principle. As in Guardian of the Spirit, scientists and scholars are key actors, although the major role is reserved for a warrior.

The story is set in a what had once been an independent kingdom, which many years ago came under the rule of an expanding empire. The imperial rulers have colonised some parts with people from their own country, sometimes leading to the displacement of the original inhabitants. The original monarchy and its administration is still active, subordinate to the empire, but sometimes secretly pursuing its own ends. Various peoples within the former kingdom and other parts of the empire also have their own interests. In particular there are the remnants of a civilisation once almost wiped out by plague, which now survives as a kind of politically active university devoted to medical science.

The lead character is Van, the leader of a group of soldiers who had been fighting a hopeless mission to defend their country from the encroaching empire. Van had expected to die in the war, but somehow he ends up a prisoner, chained with other slaves in a salt mine. A sudden vicious attack interrupts this hopeless existence. Wild dogs with strange skill and purpose race through the mine attacking everyone in it. Van defends himself, but he too is bitten. The dog runs off; but the bite carries an infection. When Van regains consciousness, apparently some days later, he finds that all his fellow prisoners are dead. Breaking free of his chains he searches the camp. The guards, prisoners and other workers are all dead. But in one hut, a woman had died hiding her baby daughter from the dogs. With this little girl, whom he calls Yuna, Van sets off out of the camp.

An attack like that on the mine also visits the kingdom's court, leading to several deaths and infections. Court doctor Hossaru starts to investigate, visiting the mine with his servant Makoukan. (At the start of the story Makoukan is the viewpoint character, so that Hossaru can be a Sherlock Holmes type genius, whose thought processes are concealed from us; but half way through we switch to seeing most of Hossaru's narrative strand through his own eyes.) Deducing that a survivor has got away, and keen to find him for the insight he might give into the disease (which resembles the plague that killed his people), Hossaru with the support of an influential nobleman in the imperial administration sends out a tracker from a village of basically ninjas (I've forgotten what they're called in the book), Sae, the daughter of the village chief. These and other characters interact, as different parts of the kingdom's government and the unseen plotters of the attacks pursue their goals.

The narrative does not give many clues to establish just what stage the civilisation portrayed is at, although it is certainly a pre-industrial world. The medical science portrayed goes well beyond what one might expect from such a world. Many aspects recall more recent biological research, some even from the last few decades, although without the theory of evolution that lies behind much of this thinking. To a large extent this is nearer to a medical science fiction novel than a fantasy. The interrelationships of parasites and of organisms in symbiotic relationships or of organisms and the environment and similar concepts then become a symbolic reflection of the interrelated nature of society or the connection of individuals to the social world around them.

The two strands of the personal story of Van, displaced from life by the loss of his family, finding and perhaps losing again his place among people and the larger story of a threatened epidemic move towards their climax over various twists and turns. Refreshingly, the stakes in the larger story are allowed to become less than world destroying while still being serious. In general the story reads well, but some of the political and environmental complications came across as constructed rather than narrated. Long and slightly clumsy exposition of invented history or scientific background also sometimes took over the narrative, even quite late in the story.

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.

The Girl the Dragon Called

竜が呼んだ娘  (ryuu ga yonda musume, The Girl the Dragon Called, 2013) is a children's fantasy by KASHIWABA Sachiko (柏葉幸子), a writer best known for 霧のむこうのふしぎな町 (The Marvellous Village Veiled in Mist, 1975). That and りんご畑の特別列車 (The Apple Orchard Special Train, 1989) that I discussed earlier are towards the more nonsensical or whimsical end of the spectrum of children's fantasy. This book is much closer to the other end of the spectrum, an adventure set in a world in which magic is real, much like a fantasy written for adults. Visits from our world to the magic world are more likely to be found towards the "nonsense" end of the spectrum. This might be because part of the interest of such books is the strangeness of their nonsense world, and an observer from our world can react appropriately. In The Girl the Dragon Called, the heroine Mia belongs to the world of the story. Even so, readers want a character who experiences the world as something new along with them. Mia  can do that because she comes from a valley cut off from the rest of the world, the home or prison of "wrongdoers" and their descendants. The only creatures linking the valley to the outside world are dragons which can fly over the surrounding cliffs. Each spring the visit of a dragon has a special significance.

Ten year olds wondering, 'Will I be called by the dragon?' felt their hearts tremble at the thought that if that happened they would be leaving the village for good.

Not just the parents of ten year old children, but the whole village would talk about who the dragon would take this year. Sometimes no-one might be called, sometimes two or three. It was an honor to be called by the dragon.

Mia is an orphan, raised by her aunt, who had herself been taken out of the valley as a child, but then returned as an adult, for some wrongdoing of her own. When the dragon calls Mia, she realises that her aunt had been preparing her to leave all her life. The dragon always brings the children to a place where they are needed; and Mia is wanted in the palace complex of the capital. The remnants of a long past war have left behind a variety of unfinished business, that Mia must help with. She is the new servant in the rooms of the hero of that war, who is now only left as a weeping voice heard at nights.

The book is not constantly serious. There are occasional patches of humour or lighthearted adventure; but there are also episodes showing a dystopian society, and more emphasis on a child's uncertain place in the world and their relation to the adults that should care for them.

Most of the various threads of the plot get a resolution of sorts by the end of the book, so that it makes a self contained novel; but it certainly feels like the door has been left open for a sequel with more of the story.

Sky Town 008

空中都市008 (kuuchuu toshi zero zero eito, Sky Town 008, 1968) by KOMATSU Sakyou (小松左京, 1931-2011) is a children's science fiction novel. Komatsu was Japan's most famous science fiction writer, probably best known in the west for 日本沈没 (nihon chinbotsu, Japan Sinks, 1973), which was filmed twice, in 1973 and in 2006. Sky Town 008 got an adaptation too, a 1969 television puppet drama by NHK.

The story is aimed at young children and gives an optimistic view of the world in the twenty first century. The main character is a primary school aged boy Hoshio, whose family (mother, father and younger sister Tsukiko) move to the city. Its name makes it sound like a city in midair; but anyone expecting James Blish style cities in flight will be disappointed. It is a more realistic earthbound city of skyscrapers, differing from those of the twentieth century in the more sophisticated use of the higher levels. Hoshio's new home is many stories up in the air, but is still a proper house with a garden. The houses and gardens wind upwards round the building in a spiral, which allows each to have light.

Each chapter brings a new episode, exporing different aspects of the town and of the world of the future. Hoshio explores the city with his neighbour Ginny (although the setting is Japan, Komatsu imagines a more international country than Japan in the sixties, and many characters are from other countries). They build a robot for a school club project, with the help of a robotics expert they know. The central computer malfunctions causing various mishaps, most amusing, some alarming, for people in the city. They have a school trip to the nearby city under the sea and make friends with an intelligent dolphin.

Most of the episodes are within the realistic mode of near future science fiction, and the kinds of adventures the children are allowed to get into are mostly close to the minor scrapes that a small child could really experience. That means that expectations of a thrilling adventure may be disappointed. There are no bad characters; in fact Hoshio and his family and friends don't even have to deal with any persistently stupid or misguided characters. The only sense in which the book rises to a climax is in saving the most exciting outing, a tourist trip to the moon, for the last chapter. I imagine though, that I would have liked this book a lot if I'd met it as a child. It reminds me strongly of Arthur C. Clarke's Islands in the Sky, which I loved, but which I see is sometimes criticised for the same lack of major tension as Sky Town 008.

 The technological developments Komatsu imagines are based on inventions and research of the sixties. There are footnotes from the original book, explaining where the ideas come from. These make for interesting reading fifty years later. Some predictions are completely wrong. Others are very close to reality, or imagine real developments, but ones which came about in a quite different way to the book.

And then there were five people missing

そして五人がいなくなる (soshite gonin ga inakunaru, And Then Five People Were Missing, 1994) is the first book in the series 名探偵夢水清志郎事件ノート (Meitantei Yumemizu Kiyoshirou jiken nooto, Case Notes of Great Detective YUMEMIZU Kiyoshirou) by はやみねかおる (HAYAMINE Kaoru, born 1964). It's a lighthearted children's detective series, probably aimed principally at children around ten to twelve, although the narrator and her sisters are slightly older (about thirteen).

Yumemizu is the new neighbour of the IWASAKI (岩崎) family. He has moved into the ramshackle western style house next door and hung up a sign saying "Yumemizu Kiyoshirou, Great Detective". The children 亜衣, 真衣 and 美衣 (Ai, Mai, Mii, or I, My, Me, as they write their names) regard this declaration with suspicion; and Ai starts to investigate the detective, calling round on the new neighbour with a gift from her mother. Yumemizu is an eccentric, always dressed in a black suit and sunglasses, mostly lying around reading or sleeping. A former lecturer and self proclaimed great detective, his self confidence is boundless, but somehow hard to credit, even though he shows Ai his card, which reads "Great Detective Yumemizu Kiyoshirou".

"You showed me the card earlier, so never mind that. I mean, tell me what cases you've solved so far."
"Fine." But although Yumemizu's mouth stayed open, no more words came out.
"What is it?"
"I can't remember."
Seeing my suspicion filled eyes, he hurried to defend himself, "It's true. I really have solved any number of difficult cases. But when a puzzle's solved, it's not interesting any more and I just forget them."
Really?

In the end Yumemizu's deductions convince the sisters that he really is a detective; but since "Great Detective" isn't a real title, they end up calling him "Professor".

The first real case comes in the summer holidays. At a nearby amusement park, the performing magician "The Count" (伯爵) makes a young girl vanish from a box suspended on ropes above the stage. When neither he nor the girl reappear, the audience realise that she has in fact been kidnapped. The Count announces that this is the first of five people he is going to make vanish; and soon another three children disappear in impossible circumstances. The figure of the Count is very much like the villain of EDOGAWA Rampo's children's series; but here there is less adventure, more emphasis on the puzzle. The book aims to be a proper classical detective story, though one in a world in which plausibility is not really a criterion. There are a couple of good ideas in the various puzzles (and one nice use of a narrative trick), but most will seem a little obvious. The chief attraction of the book is in the humour, particularly in its eccentric detective and sarcastic narrator.

The Apple Orchard Special Train

りんご畑の特別列車　(ringobatake no tokubetsu ressha, The Apple Orchard Special Train, 1989) is a children's book by KASHIWABA Sachiko (柏葉幸子), best known for The Mysterious Town beyond the Mist. Like that, this is a fantasy for young readers. You could put children's fantasy on a spectrum. At one end, you have conventional fantasy stories, much like the post-Tolkien fantasy marketed to adults, which treat a magical world as something real and try to make it plausible. At the other, you have stories like Alice in Wonderland, which put more emphasis on invention and fill their world with deliberately fanciful and absurd creations. The classics of English language children's books would fit on the spectrum something like this: Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, The Hobbit. Like The Mysterious Town beyond the Mist, The Apple Orchard Special Train falls near the middle of the spectrum, a little closer to the "absurd and inventive" end than to the "treat magic like reality" end.

Yuki is a fifth year primary school girl (ten or eleven years old), taking an early evening train home after school and piano lesson; but something seems to have gone wrong.

When he got to Yuki's seat, the conductor said, "Please show me your ticket."

But they never checked tickets on the train ..... Yuki pulled her season ticket out of her pocket. As she held it out, she felt the train taking a curve to the left and looked out of the window. There shouldn't be a curve here. As Yuki pressed her face against the window, she heard the conductor, still standing by her seat, "Not that, the special train ticket."

She turned round in panic, "'Special train?' Do you mean this train?"

The conductor nodded.

"This isn't the normal train?"

"It's the special train," the conductor shook his head.

Yuki felt sure she had checked it was the right train. A little sulkily, she said, "Well, I'll pay the difference."

Resignedly, she took out her purse; but the conductor shook his head, "You can't pay the difference. It looks like you got on the wrong train. You'll have to get off at the next stop."

"Whaaat?" As Yuki cried out in distress, the train clanked to a stop.

"Right, up you get. If you don't have a ticket, you have to get off." He took her arm and pulled her to her feet. The old woman sitting in front of Yuki looked like she felt very sorry for her, but didn't say anything.

"Right. Down you go, down you go," the conductor threw the weeping Yuki out onto the dark platform.

But it didn't say "Special Train", Yuki thought, giving it a reproachful look. What? She looked at the one coach train standing by the platform. When she had got on, there had been ten coaches. ... The train's door hissed shut, a whistle sounded and the train started moving.

"A! Aaa!" Yuki half sighed half cried. The last window of the train opened, Beni and Ryou's faces looked out. When they spotted Yuki, they called, "Go to Merry's place!", "Here's a map. It's a travel agency," and threw a crumpled piece of paper. "You have to go there."

Yuki goes to the place her friends tell her, thinking she can telephone her father to come and get her. Instead, Merry sends her into another world.

The book falls into two parts, an outer frame, in which Yuki wanders into a fantastic world, and a central narrative, in which she has an adventure in the world she has been sent to. Trains and apple orchards only turn up in the outer frame. The world she reaches is one in which everyone except her can do magic; in return, magic does not work on her. Only she can see the ghost like wizard Pekinpo, who had almost been reduced to nothing by the country's king, who had cast a spell so that no-one would remember his existence. Since Yuki is the only one who can see him, she uses his help to win a magic contest and become the companion to the young prince, who must prove his worth by recapturing a stolen piece of magic.

As often in fantasies of travelling to other worlds, the heroine finds new qualities where her character had been lacking before. Yuki sees herself as someone who is too nervous and slow to speak up or act when needed; but faced by the challenges in this world, she is forthright and positively reckless. The adventures are bloodless, and although the characters are often in real danger, the story returns regularly to scenes of comedy or friendship.

Updates

I don't generally bother to announce new translations of books I've reviewed separately; but if you're interested in children's literature, a new translation of one of INUI Tomiko's best books, The Little People in the House in the Tree's Shadow (木かげの家の小人たち), is good news. Pushkin Press are publishing a translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori, as The Secret of the Blue Glass (the title seems to be taken from the French translation, presumably because the Japanese title becomes unwieldy in English). There's a sample here at the Guardian just now (not the best bit to give an idea of the book).

I've added a note to the original post. Although a blog is pretending to be a diary, I do occasionally edit old posts. Mostly it's because I spot a spelling mistake or minor grammatical error. In that case I make the change silently. If it's anything more substantial, I try and make the change more visible, mostly by adding a square bracket with "UPDATE" in it.

The Targeted Town (The Case Notes of Telepathy Girl Ran)

ねらわれた街 テレパシー少女「蘭」事件ノート (nerawareta machi , The Targeted Town:The Case Notes of Telepathy Girl Ran, 1999) is the first in a series of children's books by ASANO Atsuko (あさのあつこ). The main character, Ran (蘭), is a thirteen year old girl just starting middle school; and the book is clearly aimed at children about that age. In many ways it is very reminiscent of Japanese popular television, particularly anime or dramas aimed at teenagers. Not surprisingly it too has been made into an anime series, by NHK in 2008.

Ran and her family, mother and father and older brother Rin (凜), live in a small but growing town. Ran already has a boyfriend, the quiet Rui (留衣), whom she has known since they were small children. She is looking forward to everything in her new school life. Then on the way to school, she hears a mocking voice inside her head.

Haha.

 Just next to her she heard a laughing voice, a tiny laughing voice.

Ran turned around.

The room was filled with the the light flowing in from the window. The cats Kishou and Tenketsu were sleeping in the bright spring sunlight. There was nobody there.

As the day progresses, she hears the voice again, now talking to her clearly, and she identifies the 'speaker' as the new student Midori (翠), who seems set to become Ran's personal enemy. After an initial confrontation however, she finds that Midori has been seeking her, having come to her town after sensing another person with strong telepathic powers in it. Midori's parents have effectively rejected her, unable to accept her powers. Ran, more at ease in her home life and confident that her family would still accept her, makes friends with Midori. There is however a real enemy at work in the town. A variety of apparently isolated incidents all have in common that people (and animals) suddenly act out of character. It seems there is someone else with psychic powers behind it all.

The mystery is one of those affairs where there's really only one suspect, though just what the culprit is after leaves some room for deduction or speculation. In general as far as plot is concerned, the book runs a very conventional path, with a thin emotional story progressing in tandem with a thin mystery. Probably the book is best seen as establishing the characters, in particular Ran, Midori and Rui, for later appearances. In the final confrontation, it is Midori, rather than Ran, who is the detective. Ran's role, from this book at least, looks to be more one of emotional guidance.

What I said about the vivid but simple style of Battery applies here too. The story here feels more conventional than that book. It looks like it is meant to be something lighter, mostly humorous outside of a few confrontation scenes. It is also more eventful and progresses a lot more purposefully.

The Burmese Harp

ビルマの竪琴 (birma no tategoto, The Burmese Harp, 1940) is a 1946 children's book by TAKEYAMA Michio (竹山道雄, 1903-1984), which ICHIKAWA Kon (市川 崑) made into a film with the same title in 1956. There is an English translation, Harp of Burma by Howard Hibbett, first published by Tuttle in 1966. The story follows a group of Japanese soldiers in Burma in the last days of the second world war and in the time between their surrender to the British and their return to Japan a year later.

Apart from an introductory chapter, the story is told by an anonymous member of the group, narrating as a representative, not so much telling us his own personal feelings and observations as what the whole group saw and felt. In fact very few of the soldiers are characterised individually and only one is named, the central character Mizushima (水島). Apart from Mizushima, the most important character is the calm and serious captain, who had been a music teacher in civilian life and now keeps the soldiers in spirits with choral singing.

Mizushima is a private (first class) who has discovered a passion for music in this setting, constructing a Burmese harp. 

You know, I think if you collected together the instruments that soldiers have, it would make an interesting museum. Wherever soldiers go, if they have any free time, someone is sure to make an instrument. Some of them are specialists; and it's astonishing what good instruments they can create, making do with the materials available. In the wind section, you go from flutes made by cutting reeds and bamboo and boring holes in them all the way to proper trumpets made by putting together pieces of broken machinery. In the percussion section, I've seen everything from the skin of a dog or cat stretched over a wooden frame to drums made by stretching some kind of skin over an oil drum. They said it was tiger skin, but, well, I don't know about that. Anyway it made an incredible, reverberating noise, and was the pride of that troop.

Mizushima is the troop's scout and goes ahead of them in Burmese clothing to check that they are not going to run into British soldiers. In one village, the Japanese find themselves surrounded by Gurkas and British and Indian soldiers, waiting in ambush in the jungle outside. Pretending to still be celebrating the feast they had been enjoying, the Japanese keep singing their traditional songs, as they push the cart with their ammunition out of the village. A moment before they turn from singing to attack the enemy, the captain stops them. The British soldiers are singing the same songs. (In the nineteenth century, there was a westernising movement in music education, that brought many British songs to Japan with new texts, as well as Japanese compositions in a western style.) The threat of fighting passes, and they find that the war is over and Japan has surrendered.

Nearby a different group has not surrendered so easily. The captain is asked to help and sends Mizushima to try and convince the hold outs to accept defeat. Transported across the country to a prisoner of war camp in Mudan, they wait for him to return; but when months pass without sign of him, it becomes clear that something has gone wrong, particularly when they find that the survivors of the group he was meant to convince had in the end surrendered and are being treated for their injuries in a nearby hospital.  Unable to find out more, they have to assume that Mizushima is dead; but then the captain, driven by his guilt at sending him on the mission, begins to suspect that maybe a buddhist monk they have seen could be the surviving Mizushima. The soldiers fluctuate between belief and rejection, as various clues make the identity seem more or less likely. Meanwhile the captain starts teaching a parrot, the brother of the one that the monk always carries on his shoulder.

Stroking the parrot, he said, "There, there, we've all been ignoring you, haven't we? From now on we'll look after you properly. In return, you can learn some Japanese."

The parrot shook itself with happiness. It clacked its hard bill and stuck out a cold rubber like tongue and pecked the captain's hand.

What the captain had started doing was really strange. He would divide up the food he received three times a day, then he would say, "Oy, Mizushima," and when the parrot repeated it, he would let it feed from the palm of his hand. Then he would say, "Come with us" and when the parrot repeated that he would give it a share of meat from his side dish. Finally he would say, "Home to Japan."  

They send the parrot to the monk; but although he receives it, he seems unwilling to admit that he is Mizushima, appearing only as a silent watching figure outside the camp. Only when they have finally embarked on the boat home do they learn from a letter what had kept him in Burma.

The narration, despite the serious subject matter, mostly runs along calmly and cheerfully. Some bits are even like a children's adventure story. In particular an episode in a cannibal village, wisely dropped from the film, reads as if it came out of a nineteenth century adventure. The book and film are sometimes described as anti war; and they're certainly not pro war. It might be better to see them as depicting people coming to terms with being the losers in a mistaken war and working out what they should be doing with their lives now.

The film is very close to the book. There are hardly any scenes or dialogue which are not taken from it. The main difference, except for some abbreviation, is that Mizushima's narrative is inserted into the story earlier. As Takeyama comments, the central part of the book is structured like a detective story, except that the mystery is only important for the soldiers' feelings. Since the narrative is so even paced, readers are probably willing enough to read first the troops' account, then Mizushima's; but a film viewer has different expectations.