#1937Club or not? A fascinating title from Japan… #kawabata

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m pleased that I’ve been able to include translated works for the #1937Club, and today sees another one making its appearance on the Ramblings! This book was a last minute idea, and I’m perhaps cheating slightly with the date, as it’s a work which was released in segments, then a complete version in 1937 and then revised for a later edition. The book is “Snow Country” by Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. I’m probably pushing things a little by including it here, but I’m going by the Wikipedia entry which says: “He combined these segments into a “complete” Snow Country, making numerous changes to the texts as they appeared in the journals, which was published in June 1937.” And it’s my blog, and I felt like reading it, so there!! 😀

At 114 pages in my edition, “Snow Country” is in novella territory (though the typeface *is* very small…) I believe it’s often considered Kawabata’s masterpiece and it tells the story of Komako, a young girl who lives in a mountainous hot spring village in Japan in the eponymous snow country, and her love for Shimamura, a visitor from Tokyo. When they first meet, Komako is still very young and although she helps out at parties, she’s not yet a trained geisha. However, on his return for a repeat visit, Shimamura finds that she’s become a geisha, and the book traces their odd relationship over these visits, as well as both of their relationships with Yoko, a young woman Shimamura first encounters on a train journey to the village.

The book is set against the changing seasons in the snow country, and the weather has extremes as well as seeming to influence many of the characters’ actions. Shimamura himself is an odd, almost impassive, person; escaping from his family to get away from Tokyo for a while, he thinks nothing of spending time with other women, and as well as Komako, he’s very drawn to Yoko. He’s something of a dilettante, with an interest in Western ballet (despite never having seen one) and his behaviour towards Komako is certainly inconsistent.

Following a stream, the train came out on the plain. A mountain, cut at the top in curious notches and spires, fell off in a graceful sweep to the far skirts. Over it the moon was rising. The solid, integral shape of the mountain, taking up the whole of the evening landscape there at the end of the plain, was set off in a deep purple against the pale light of the sky. The moon was no longer an afternoon white, but, faintly colored, it had not yet taken on the clear coldness of the winter night. There was not a bird in the sky. Nothing broke the lines of the wide skirts to the right and the left. Where the mountain swept down to meet the river, a stark white building, a hydroelectric plant perhaps, stood out sharply from the withered scene the train window framed, one last spot saved from the night.

For her part, Komako is a women of emotional extremes, and elements of her past are gradually revealed over the length of the book. On the initial train journey, Yoko had been looking after a young man called Yukio, and there are rumours that he was engaged to Komako. Despite her denials, it appears that Komako has taken up work as a geisha to pay his medical bills (a burden which will disappear with his death). She drinks heavily, behaves erratically and has a troubled relationship with Yoko. It’s clear that the rather flimsy Shimamura is obsessed with beauty and aesthetics, but has no real substance; and as events build to a dramatic climax, it seems that the two women have only each to care about, with the man in the centre of this taking a step backwards at every point where he might have been some use.

“Snow Country” is a beautifully written book which throws up a number of questions and provokes many thoughts! Shimamura himself is an oddly elusive character, often drifting off into reveries and dreams when faced with beauty in any form, whether of a human face or voice, or indeed the stars and mountains surrounding him. There’s a superficial aspect to him, whereas the women seem much more solid. Komako is a young and emotional girl, moving into womanhood, drinking too much, obsessed with Shimamura yet unable to hold onto him, and I felt sorry for her; it seems that she’s simply being used and has no chance of getting what she wants. Yoko too is somewhat evasive and I was never quite sure what motivated her.

Whether it can be classed as from 1937 or not, I found “Snow Country” a fascinating and absorbing read, full of beautiful imagery and drama; and it’s left me thinking about how overwhelming nature can be, how tragic it is that Komako’s beauty will be wasted before long because of her dissipated lifestyle, and how we should perhaps put people before abstract notions of aesthetics. There are hints of the contrast between tradition and modernity too; despite the older tradition of the geisha, there are trains and modern trappings which indicate this is a world which is changing. The writing has almost a hypnotic quality, and although the book is an easy, potentially quick read, it has the kind of prose that lingers in the mind. An unforgettable book, then, and even if it’s cheating a little, I’m glad I chose to read “Snow Country” now!

“I was not so much observing the play as observing the players.” #JapaneseLitChallenge17

My second read for this month’s Japanese Literature Challenge is the book I considered picking up after I’d read “Chevengur“, but chose instead “In That Dawn”. It’s a fairly recent arrival to the TBR, picked up in a local charity shop back in April last year, and it’s “The Master of Go” by Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Edward Seidensticker. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, Kawabata was a prolific author; but despite having several of his titles on the TBR (and they’ve been there a loooong time in some cases), I don’t think I’ve actually read any of them yet. I could have picked out any of them, but this book kind of ties in with another title on the TBR, so I decided to read it now – and a fascinating book it is.

First published in 1954 in novel form (having previously been serialised in 1951), “The Master of Go” is a book that the author apparently considered to be his finest work. It’s reputedly very different to his other books (something I can’t comment on yet!) and could almost be called autofiction. As the title suggest, the story centres around the traditional Japanese game of Go, a seemingly simple game played with black and white stones which is actually very complex. In 1938 a long game of Go took place between the master, Honio Shusai, and an up and coming challenger; and Kawabata was reporting on the game for a newspaper. It was the final match of the Master’s career, and Kawabata took his reports and his recording of events, turning them into this book which explores a lot more than you might think.

In the novel, the Go match takes place between the Master and his challenger, Otake, over a period of six months; although the play itself can take literally hours for one move, these are sometimes done in a matter of minutes, and so the length of any match is variable. This, however, is an epic clash which had dramatic effects. From the opening pages of the book we learn of the Master’s death, not long after the match was completed, and Kawabata goes on to relate the course of the match over those six months.

So we witness the early stages of the match as the combatants make their opening moves; observe the seasons change as the game continues and the location of the battle changes; see the moves represented on small diagrams within the text; and start to realise the effect that this game of Go is having on the Master’s health as the strain on him begins to show.

Most professional Go players like other games as well, but the Master’s addiction was rather special. He could not play an easy, nonchalant match, letting well enough alone. There was no end to his patience and endurance. He played day and night, his obsession somewhat disquieting. It was less as if he were playing to dispel gloom or beguile tedium than as if he were giving himself up to the fangs of gaming devils. He gave himself to mahjong and billiards just as he gave himself to Go.

On the surface, therefore, this perhaps seems a fairly simple novel, but there’s much to be gained from reading it. Kawabata and his narrator are fascinated by Go, and this is obviously a preoccupation shared by most of the population, as the reports in the newspapers are extremely popular. And it’s intriguing to see how the various players are also drawn to other games, like chess or mahjong; it’s as if they can’t bear to not be involved in some kind of puzzle or combat, and that obsession with constant gaming has strong parallels with modern computer gaming addictions.

This kind of Go match seems very much rooted in place and time, with an importance we would not necessarily recognise nowadays. The rules and rituals, the commitment of the players, and the willingness to give up chunks of your life to consider and plan strategies; all of this is quite fascinating. But there could well be other themes underlying the story.

At the time of the book, Japan was undergoing much change (and also, incidentally, on the brink of WW2, as well as at war with China); and “Master…” does read as a clash between the old and the new world, with the traditions of Japan gradually being swept away. The Master’s method of play is constantly contrasted against those of his younger rival, and there are conflicts about the ritual and ceremonial aspects of the game. These elements would no doubt have been significant to readers at the time, and they remain intriguing to me as a modern reader too.

It may be said that the Master was plagued in his last match by modern rationalism, to which fussy rules were everything, from which all the grace and elegance of Go as art had disappeared, which quite dispensed with respect for elders and attached no importance to mutual respect as human beings. From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation. The road to advancement in rank, which controlled the life of a player, had become a meticulous point system. One conducted the battle only to win, and there was no margin for remembering the dignity and the fragrance of Go as an art. The modern way was to insist upon doing battle under conditions of abstract justice, even when challenging the Master himself. The fault was not Otaké’s. Perhaps what had happened was but natural, Go being a contest and a show of strength.

There is, of course, another theme which could be drawn out, and that is the defeat of Japan during the Second World War. Although this epic Go match took place in 1938, with the Master’s eventual death in 1940, Kawabata didn’t write the novel until well after the end of WW2. It’s hard not to read the defeat of the Master and the old ways of Japan as representing the fate of the Japanese nation at the end of the conflict.

“The Master of Go” was a fascinating read from start to finish, even for me as someone who knows absolutely nothing about Go or its rules. Yes, there are the diagrams and the descriptions of play, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t get these, as the context and the effects of play are what matters. Interestingly, in the introduction to the book, Liza Dalby draws parallels between Kawabata and Herman Hesse; both won the Noble Prize and, of course, Hesse created a fictional ‘glass bead game’ which featured in one of his most famous works. It didn’t matter to me that I didn’t really know how the game worked in that book, and it didn’t here either. However, I consider myself intrigued by Go and its rules and playing methods – so much so that I’m contemplating reading that work I mentioned on the TBR that deals with just that topic! Watch this space… 😉