Once and forever

Kenji Miyazawa, 1896-1933

Book - 2018

"A collection of classic, fantastical tales from Northern Japan that are equal parts whimsical and sophisticated, perfect for readers of all ages. Kenji Miyazawa is one of modern Japan's most beloved writers, a great poet and a strange and marvelous spinner of tales, whose sly, humorous, enchanting, and enigmatic stories bear a certain resemblance to those of his contemporary Robert Walser. John Bester's selection and expert translation of Miyazawa's short fiction reflects its full range from the joyful, innocent "Wildcat and the Acorns," to the cautionary tale "The Restaurant of Many Orders," to "The Earthgod and the Fox," which starts out whimsically before taking a tragic turn. Miyazawa a...lso had a deep connection to Japanese folklore and an intense love of the natural world. In "The Wild Pear," what seem to be two slight nature sketches succeed in encapsulating some of the cruelty and compensations of life itself"--

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Subjects
Genres
Short stories
Published
New York : New York Review Books 2018.
Language
English
Japanese
Main Author
Kenji Miyazawa, 1896-1933 (author)
Other Authors
John Bester, 1927-2010 (translator)
Item Description
Stories first published in Japanese, translated into a new original, never before published collection.
"The Japanese titles of the stories collected in this volume are, in consecutive order: 'Tsuchigami to kitsune'; 'Hakushu-shogun to sannin kyodai no isha'; 'Otsuberu to zo'; 'Shishi-odori no hajimari'; 'Nametokoyama no kuma'; 'Donguri to yamaneko'; 'Sero-hiki no Goshu'; 'Tokkobe Torako'; 'Yamata no yuri'; 'Chumon no oi ryoriten'; 'Yamaotoko no shigatsu'; 'Dokumomi no sukina shocho-san'; 'Horakuma-gakko o sotsugyo shita sannin'; 'Suisenzuki no yokka'; 'Manazuru to dariya'; 'Kairo-dancho'; 'Tsue nezumi'; 'Matsuri no ban'; 'Kai no hi'; 'Tsukiyo no den-shinbashira'; 'Ken ju koen-rin'; 'Yamanashi'; 'Hayashi no soko'; and 'Yodaka no hoshi.'"--Verso of title page.
Physical Description
xiv, 273 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
ISBN
9781681372600
  • The Earthgod and the Fox
  • General Son Ba-yu
  • Ozbel and the Elephant
  • The First Deer Dance
  • The Bears of Nametoko
  • Wildcat and the Acorns
  • Gorsch the Cellist
  • Tokkobe Torako
  • A Stem of Lilies
  • The Restaurant of Many Orders
  • The Man of the Hills
  • The Police Chief
  • The Spider, the Slug, and the Raccoon
  • The Red Blanket
  • The Dahlias and the Crane
  • The Thirty Frogs
  • The Ungrateful Rat
  • Night of the Festival
  • The Fire Stone
  • March by Moonlight
  • Kenju's Wood
  • The Wild Pear
  • Down in the Wood
  • The Nighthawk Star.
Review by New York Times Review

ALTHOUGH THE early-20th-century Japanese writer Kenji Miyazawa died in his 30s, he produced an impressive number of poems and stories. His work was admired by many, from scholars in his own country to the American poet Gary Snyder, whose translations introduced Miyazawa's verses to an English-speaking audience. Now, finally, we have been given a collection of Miyazawa's stories, the work of the British translator John Bester. "Once and Forever" offers glimpses into a vanished, semi-mythic agrarian world. In "Night of the Festival," a young boy encounters a "wild man of the hills" at the festival of a mountain god; when he offers a spontaneous act of kindness, the man repays him out of all proportion to his good deed. As in the poetic form he preferred, the tanka, Miyazawa also closely observes the shifting landscape. And so, in "The Bears of Nametoko," we are told that "on most days of the year, the mountain breathes in and breathes out cold mists and clouds. The peaks all around it, too, are like blackish green sea slugs or bald sea goblins." The sky in "Gorsch the Cellist" is "turning faintly silver where black clouds were scudding across it toward the north." Much of the material in "Once and Forever" fulfills a reader's expectations of fairy tales. Miyazawa's subject matter is at times gloomy (betrayal and death feature prominently) and often otherworldly. The central character in "The First Deer Dance" finds himself suddenly able to understand animal language, while in "March by Moonlight," electric poles spring to life, walking along the railroad tracks, as almost any child who's ever gazed at their anthropomorphic forms has suspected they might. Many of the stories deliver moral lessons, some with blunt humor: Two blustering, privileged young men are almost eaten alive in "The Restaurant of Many Orders" - and the reader wishes they were. Other stories are rendered with such nuanced ambiguity that it's impossible to extract a moral. (In "The Fire Stone," a young rabbit receives a rare, precious stone as thanks for saving a bird's life, but the reasons it is later taken away remain multivalent and mysterious.) Like the tales of Andersen and the Grimms, many of the stories in "Once and Forever" may appeal to children: the sort of thoughtful, dark-minded children who like Neil Gaiman's "Coraline." But adults will be the primary audience for the shivers of disturbance these stories send up the spine. The central figure in one tale struggles to face his own mediocrity, even as the neighborhood animals show him his musical gifts; another features a merciless oppressor who exploits a band of tree frogs; elsewhere, a boy undertakes a seemingly useless project that ends up serving his community for generations. The swift evocations of the landscape, good humor about human foibles (when an "ungrateful rat" taunts an animate rat trap, we laughingly root for the trap) and sparks of magic only make these stories more touching. At times, the prose can feel fusty and twee, especially in creaky turns of phrase: the way a slug chortles "Ho-ho-ho!" over and over or a character is labeled "a most odd-looking little man." Lacking familiarity with Japanese, it's hard to know if the tinge of mildew comes from the original text (roughly a hundred years old at this point, but so are the still-fresh works of Gertrude Stein) or the taste of the translator. From the antique tone of the introduction, one suspects the latter. Nevertheless, for readers who relish the disturbing material of fairy tale, the specificity and surprise of tanka, collisions of the everyday with the supernatural and glimpses of Japan right on the brink of industrialization, this English volume of Kenji Miyazawa's odd, masterly stories will be a delight. On most days of the year, the mountain breathes in and breathes out cold mists and clouds. The peaks all around it, too. EMILY barton's most recent novel is "The Book of Esther."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 11, 2019]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In the transcendent stories of Miyazawa (1896-1933), Earth teems with magic and wonder. Hunters can overhear bears conversing, earthgods weep with loneliness, and animals must attend "Badger School." While ostensibly for children, these stories are suffused with a sublime melancholy that will appeal to all ages. "The Nighthawk Star" recounts how the physically ugly nighthawk, bullied by the other birds, flies high into the night sky until he becomes the nighthawk star, "still burning to this day." In "The Restaurant of Many Orders," two young hunters deep in the forest stumble upon The Restaurant Wildcat, which is far too inviting, showcasing Miyazawa's sly humor. Some tales, such as "A Stem of Lilies," in which a King dispatches his chancellor to find a stem of lilies for the king to present to Buddha as an offering, seem little more than enigmatic sketches. While most of the stories possess a timeless folktale quality, details such as General Electricity and his marching telegraph poles, or soldiers trying to blow out electric lights, situate the work in a rapidly changing Japan. While Miyazawa does not eschew the tropes of folktales-his forests teem with talking animals, magic stones, and moral lessons-this collection proves his poetic voice and craft transcend the genre. (Oct.) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Best known as a poet, Japanese writer Miyazawa (1896-1933) turns to folklore and European modernism alike in this welcome collection of short fiction.It's a pleasing sign of cultural flexibility that Japanese pop culture, by way of anime, has found room for Miyazawa as inspiration and model; it's hard to imagine an American superhero comic making similar room for, say, Sherwood Anderson. Yet Miyazawa is certainly playful enough to sustain a cartoon or comic, even when his purpose might be darker than it would seem at first glance. Consider his story "The Restaurant of Many Orders," whose title does not refer to the rush of customers to keep the cooks busy but instead to a bossy establishment that instructs would-be patrons to go through a series of mandates, from combing their hair to spreading cream over their faces and ears, and lots of it, too. Finally, one of the well-groomed hunters who wanders into the place comes to a realization: "I've an idea that restaurant' doesn't mean a place for serving food, but a place for cooking people and serving them." Spot-on. Some of Miyazawa's enigmatic stories seem to conceal hints of Kafka, as with "Gorsch the Cellist," in which a not so very accomplished musician finds that his best audience is a studious cuckoo: "In fact, the more he played the more convinced he became that the cuckoo was better than he was." Badgers, cats, rabbits, and other critters figure in the story, as they do in many of Miyazawa's piecesand it's a stroke of Kafkaesque brilliance that in one of them, a trap that catches a rat should have a speaking role. A hallmark is "The Fire Stone," a story in which a family of puzzled rabbits comes into possession of a dazzling jewel that burns "like the fires of a volcano[and] shone like the sunset" and that touches off all kinds of discord before it takes flight like a bird and disappears.A marvelous writer who deserves to be much better known in English. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.