Jul 19

JQ Magazine: Book Review — ‘A True Novel’

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“A True Novel remarkably depicts the sense of isolation that anyone who has lived abroad or moved to a new place experiences. It captures the very human and conflicted desires to simultaneously fit into a society while also desiring to rebel against its impositions.” (Other Press)

By Julio Perez Jr. (Kyoto-shi, 2011-13) for JQ magazine. A bibliophile, writer, translator, and graduate from Columbia University, Julio is currently working at Ishikawa Prefecture’s New York office while seeking opportunities with publications in New York. Follow his enthusiasm for Japan, literature, and board gaming on his blog and Twitter @brittlejules.

This is the story of a poor boy that had the misfortune to fall in love with a rich girl. A classic Gothic tale of romance transplanted and re-imagined in postwar Japan.  If you like your lovers star-crossed and your antiheroes of the rags to riches variety, then you’re in for a treat with Minae Mizumura’s A True Novel. Winner of the Yomiuri Literature Prize in 2002, A True Novel is a book filled with familiar themes executed in interesting new ways. It is a re-imagining of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in postwar Japan, with parallels among some characters, but different enough to be original and uniquely Japanese.

A True Novel is a unique and engrossing tale that brings together three seemingly unrelated characters who are united not only by a resigned sense of isolation from their surroundings but also united in their encounters and fascination with the book’s protagonist, Taro Azuma. The focus of the novel is the story of his tragic youth, a poor boy who falls in love with a rich girl, and his growing awareness that he would always be incompatible with her in the eyes of others. He flees to America, where he claws his way up from the dregs of society and overcomes the obstacles of class and wealth to become one of the richest Japanese men of his time. While we learn about his fascinating life through the three different viewpoints of the characters with their sometimes humanly biased perspectives, the book also gives insight into the complex identities of the uprooted lives of immigrants and refugees both in Japan and in America, as well as how attitudes toward them have changed over time. A True Novel remarkably depicts the sense of isolation that anyone who has lived abroad or moved to a new place experiences. It captures the very human and conflicted desires to simultaneously fit into a society while also desiring to rebel against its impositions.

Mizumura has masterfully brought to life narrators and characters from different generations, countries, and social classes, and provides fascinating insight into their lives during different periods of Japanese history. From the bleak years of Imperial Japan’s home front during the Pacific War, and the humbling postwar period, through its modern economic success, and finally to the bubble burst and recent events, Japanese modern history comes alive in an intimate and immediate way that inspires new appreciation and curiosity for the human side of history.

One thing that painfully hits home is how powerfully felt the difference of classes can be and how formative they are for Taro’s character. Taro and others find themselves drawn into the charmed lives of the beautiful Saegusa sisters and their well-off family. Taro’s connection to them at times seems serendipitous and at others seems to be the cruelest act of fate. As a war orphan, he found himself out of place in the servant family that begrudgingly adopted and abused him, and even more out of place among the privileged upper class Saegusa family his childhood companion descended from. His youth is filled with shame and awareness of the difference between them. One memorable instance occurs when he visits the Saegusa summer home for the first time, where his ill-fitting clothing among the splendor of the property and its stylish occupants stands out so starkly that “he might as well have worn a sign around his neck marked POOR BOY.”

What makes Taro different from other servants is that due to circumstances I won’t spoil for you, he is treated like a playmate for the youngest daughter of one branch of the family, whom he comes to adore, yet at their home but he is treated as a servant when the entire family gathers. There is a heart wrenching scene where out of sympathy one of the mothers offers him a sweater that her own son would not need and the realization that, “Out in the garden was a boy his own age whose mother was this gentle, beautiful young woman; and the other sweater…was for that boy to wear…He must have felt a stab of envy and longing, mixed with an instinctive animosity toward the boy,” which causes him to say nothing and run away. This envy and animosity will become a driving force for Taro’s character and the conflicts in his life yet to be revealed.

One interesting aspect of the book I enjoyed was a blending of reality and fiction. In the prologue, Mizumura inserts herself as a character and implies that the creation of the novel was inspired from a true story that she encountered. There are also photographs of scenery taken right out of the narrative. Mizumura asserts that the problem she was confronting in writing A True Novel was “telling a real ‘story just like a novel’ in Japanese.” And this is what sparks its title. The true strength of this tale is that whether or not all of the characters and events are true to life, they are portrayed in such a way that the reader feels it must be true, and if it is not, wishes it to be true. This is arguably one of the greatest strengths of true fiction. The feelings of isolation, despair, and love found in the characters, and the empathy for such feelings, will remain real to the reader long after the book is closed. Mizumura and Juliet Winters Carpenter’s translation have truly created a lovely book with prose that is hauntingly beautiful and addictively intimate.

If you enjoy books that bring to life not the events, but the atmosphere, of a moment in history, or if you like the tragic love affairs and rags to riches stories of Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby, then you’re sure to enjoy A True Novel. If after you finish you are looking for more Japanese books in a similar vein, I would suggest trying The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki.

For more JQ magazine book reviews, click here.