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青山 七恵 ひとり日和 東京：河出書房新社
Aoyama, Nanae. Hitori Biyori. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2007. 169p. JPY 1,200 ISBN: 978-4-309-01808-9 (hc)
Hitori Biyori, which loosely translates as “A Nice Day For Being Alone,” is the first of this year’s recipients of the semi-annual Akutagawa prize. If you combine the Pulitzer Prize, the Booker Prize and perhaps a Rookie of the Year award for any given sport, you might get a sense of what the hype surrounding Japan’s Akutagawa Prize is all about. A life-changing award given to young writers of what the Japanese call junbungaku [純文学], or serious literature, the Akutagawa Prize has heralded the beginning of illustrious careers (think Oe Kenzaburo, Abe Kobo), or has put undue pressure and served as a cautionary tale for fame arriving too quickly. Aoyama Nanae’s Hitori Biyori, continues the trend of younger and younger women being awarded the prize for works that belie the junbungaku moniker and seem more intent on following the simpler writing styles of more famous popular novelists such as Murakami Haruki (Oe Kenzaburo’s one-time example of what was wrong with contemporary Japanese fiction) and Yoshimoto Banana. Aoyama, who studied librarianship and now works for a travel agency, is the third youngest female recipient of the award, after 2003 co-winners Kanehara Hitomi (Hebi ni Piasu) and Wataya Risa (Keritai senaka). Though young, this is actually Aoyama’s second novel; her first, Mado no Akari (Window Lights), was written while she was still at university, and it eventually won the Bungei Prize in 2005. When asked about her youth in an interview, Aoyama is said to have been inspired by French novelist Francoise Sagan (1935-2004), whose first novel Bonjour Tristesse had been published when that author was only 18.
Similar to Kanehara and Wataya, Aoyama portrays a young woman disaffected with her life just as it reaches adulthood. Unlike Kanehara’s look into the grotesqueness of certain youth subcultures or Wataya’s satire of those who worship popular culture, however, the young characters in Hitori Biyori seem much more detached from society and the lures of youth culture. Divided into four parts for each of Japan’s main seasons, Hitori Biyori follows one year in the life of a young woman unsure of her place in the world and living, essentially, day by day without any sense of direction. Spurned by her first boyfriend, the main character Chizu comes to live with an aging distant relative in a small, run-down house located right next to a local train station in Tokyo. Urged on by her absentee mother to go to college, Chizu resists, and continues working an unfulfilling job as a cashier at a kiosk in a train station. Where some previous winners such as Kanehara, ignored their elders completely in their fiction, referring to them as only ancillary figures, Aoyama includes Chizu’s aging relative in an important role in her story. A perfect complement to the sometimes snippy and moody young girl, the reticent yet cheerful old woman spends her days cooking for Chizu and attending dance classes with a neighborhood oji-san, who just may be her beau. In a country where youth rules popular culture and the so-called “tarento” get younger and younger, it is a breath of fresh air to read a story that includes a geriatric love story, especially from such a young writer.
The merits of the book are subtle and perhaps closer in simplicity to works by Yoshimoto Banana, but certain themes of disaffection are brilliantly portrayed in scenes using trains and train stations as a background—one of which draws out an interesting parallel to Shimamura in the beginning of Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country. In one poignant scene, the narrator admits to her equally disaffected boyfriend that she feels envious of people riding trains because they seem to have a purpose. As a result of this, she gets the desire to go somewhere new, to the mountains in Takaosan, but this hiking trip ultimately doesn’t make her any happier. Her desire to withdraw combined with living across from a train station that acts as a constant reminder of her own inadequacies, further confuses this young girl, which allows Aoyama to create a perfect sense of tension in this character.
Criticized by many readers as slow, or slight, or even boring, its choice as Akutagawa Prize winner is significant in that it marks the first time judges Murakami Ryu (winner in 1976 for Kagirinaku tomeini chikai buru [Almost Transparent Blue]) and Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro (winner in 1955 for Taiyo no Kisetsu [Season of the Sun]) have agreed to choose the same book. It is hoped by this reviewer that the book, despite its rather slow pace and subtle style, will be translated into English. Though Japanese literature, especially haiku or tanka, has had trouble being translated into English, modern novels such as this one that seem to have taken on the simpler styles of American influenced writers like Murakami, would be more easily translated. Unfortunately, of the last 12 winners, only Hebi Ni Piasu has been translated into English (Snakes and Earrings), while the rest of the winners, for various reasons, have not yet been translated. The only reason this reviewer can think that Hebi Ni Piasu was translated was because of its portrayal of a very specific sub-culture of Japanese youth that might have appealed to Westerners because of its grotesque descriptions & exoticism. Books such as Aoyama’s, on the other hand, are having a tough time being translated because they present a much more prosaic, though no less artistic or insightful, look at modern Japanese culture.
Aoyama, Nanae. Hitori Biyori. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2007. 169p. JPY 1,200 ISBN: 978-4-309-01808-9 (hc)
Hitori Biyori, which loosely translates as “A Nice Day For Being Alone,” is the first of this year’s recipients of the semi-annual Akutagawa prize. If you combine the Pulitzer Prize, the Booker Prize and perhaps a Rookie of the Year award for any given sport, you might get a sense of what the hype surrounding Japan’s Akutagawa Prize is all about. A life-changing award given to young writers of what the Japanese call junbungaku [純文学], or serious literature, the Akutagawa Prize has heralded the beginning of illustrious careers (think Oe Kenzaburo, Abe Kobo), or has put undue pressure and served as a cautionary tale for fame arriving too quickly. Aoyama Nanae’s Hitori Biyori, continues the trend of younger and younger women being awarded the prize for works that belie the junbungaku moniker and seem more intent on following the simpler writing styles of more famous popular novelists such as Murakami Haruki (Oe Kenzaburo’s one-time example of what was wrong with contemporary Japanese fiction) and Yoshimoto Banana. Aoyama, who studied librarianship and now works for a travel agency, is the third youngest female recipient of the award, after 2003 co-winners Kanehara Hitomi (Hebi ni Piasu) and Wataya Risa (Keritai senaka). Though young, this is actually Aoyama’s second novel; her first, Mado no Akari (Window Lights), was written while she was still at university, and it eventually won the Bungei Prize in 2005. When asked about her youth in an interview, Aoyama is said to have been inspired by French novelist Francoise Sagan (1935-2004), whose first novel Bonjour Tristesse had been published when that author was only 18.
Similar to Kanehara and Wataya, Aoyama portrays a young woman disaffected with her life just as it reaches adulthood. Unlike Kanehara’s look into the grotesqueness of certain youth subcultures or Wataya’s satire of those who worship popular culture, however, the young characters in Hitori Biyori seem much more detached from society and the lures of youth culture. Divided into four parts for each of Japan’s main seasons, Hitori Biyori follows one year in the life of a young woman unsure of her place in the world and living, essentially, day by day without any sense of direction. Spurned by her first boyfriend, the main character Chizu comes to live with an aging distant relative in a small, run-down house located right next to a local train station in Tokyo. Urged on by her absentee mother to go to college, Chizu resists, and continues working an unfulfilling job as a cashier at a kiosk in a train station. Where some previous winners such as Kanehara, ignored their elders completely in their fiction, referring to them as only ancillary figures, Aoyama includes Chizu’s aging relative in an important role in her story. A perfect complement to the sometimes snippy and moody young girl, the reticent yet cheerful old woman spends her days cooking for Chizu and attending dance classes with a neighborhood oji-san, who just may be her beau. In a country where youth rules popular culture and the so-called “tarento” get younger and younger, it is a breath of fresh air to read a story that includes a geriatric love story, especially from such a young writer.
The merits of the book are subtle and perhaps closer in simplicity to works by Yoshimoto Banana, but certain themes of disaffection are brilliantly portrayed in scenes using trains and train stations as a background—one of which draws out an interesting parallel to Shimamura in the beginning of Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country. In one poignant scene, the narrator admits to her equally disaffected boyfriend that she feels envious of people riding trains because they seem to have a purpose. As a result of this, she gets the desire to go somewhere new, to the mountains in Takaosan, but this hiking trip ultimately doesn’t make her any happier. Her desire to withdraw combined with living across from a train station that acts as a constant reminder of her own inadequacies, further confuses this young girl, which allows Aoyama to create a perfect sense of tension in this character.
Criticized by many readers as slow, or slight, or even boring, its choice as Akutagawa Prize winner is significant in that it marks the first time judges Murakami Ryu (winner in 1976 for Kagirinaku tomeini chikai buru [Almost Transparent Blue]) and Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro (winner in 1955 for Taiyo no Kisetsu [Season of the Sun]) have agreed to choose the same book. It is hoped by this reviewer that the book, despite its rather slow pace and subtle style, will be translated into English. Though Japanese literature, especially haiku or tanka, has had trouble being translated into English, modern novels such as this one that seem to have taken on the simpler styles of American influenced writers like Murakami, would be more easily translated. Unfortunately, of the last 12 winners, only Hebi Ni Piasu has been translated into English (Snakes and Earrings), while the rest of the winners, for various reasons, have not yet been translated. The only reason this reviewer can think that Hebi Ni Piasu was translated was because of its portrayal of a very specific sub-culture of Japanese youth that might have appealed to Westerners because of its grotesque descriptions & exoticism. Books such as Aoyama’s, on the other hand, are having a tough time being translated because they present a much more prosaic, though no less artistic or insightful, look at modern Japanese culture.
Reviewed by Andrew Weiss, LIS student, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Review submitted in April 2007.
