Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2011

When quizzed about this, her most recent novel—which has been longlisted for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize and is now available in English translation—Banana Yoshimoto referred to her intention to “help people engage in deep introspection concerning their lives and their way of living.” Never one for false modesty in her 30-year-long prizewinning career, she added that reading her works will also help people “heal the wounds and pain from the [March 11] disasters.” People’s “awareness will never be the same,” she said.

This theme of awareness of trauma, or rather, a struggle towards such awareness, is what interlaces this short, melancholy, and rhythmic novel. At less than 200 pages it will certainly be a walk in the park in comparison to Murakami’s latest beast, and criticisms have been leveled at Yoshimoto for being lightweight. True, engaging with her frank-sounding, first-person narrative does feel more like slipping into a warm bath than sallying forth into a thunderstorm.

Yet the strong emotional characterization of the narrator Chihiro, a young mural painter living alone in Tokyo after the death of her mother, is gripping on a guttural level. The reader is invited into her self-analytical anecdotes of her colorful family and upbringing, interwoven with the present-day story: a bizarre, neurotic relationship with her neighbor Nakajima, who has more depth to him than immediately apparent.

The theme of murky depths, fitting of course with the eponymous lake that makes its eerie appearance a third of the way through the novel, calls to mind a passage from Margaret Atwood’s tour de force Cat’s Eye:

“You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.”

Stories and motivations bubble up to the surface piecemeal, stimulated by events, chains of thought, and the proactive exploration of past trauma in order to deal with it. Many other reviews of this work—and its own promotional text—happily give away the book’s denouement. And in fact, this ostensible plot driver, the hidden past of Nakajima, felt less interesting to me than the attitudes of Chihiro. I could understand the popular criticisms of the author when I was taken up with the A-plot, which I found to be clumsy and simplistic. But I fell in love with the seemingly rambling accompanying narrative of the leading lady.

Curiously, Yoshimoto stated that the original character was Nakajima, and that Chihiro was merely invented to complement him. If the author can so casually create such a charming character, and off-hand discuss the nature of love, neurosis and insecurity with such wisdom, then it must always be worth studying her narrative peripheries. Here is Chihiro on her relationship with her father:

“Love isn’t only a matter of fussing over each other, hugging, wanting to be together. Some things communicate, inevitably, precisely because you keep them in check. The heartfelt feelings that find their way to you in the form of money and imported gourmet ham.
Having the sensitivity to gauge those things is a real gift.”

Yet of course, despite her nonchalance about her structural intentions, the latticework of themes is no accident. Parental love and how it is expressed is what saturates the novel from start to finish. If there is something contrived about the way the ends tie together and the “mystery” is explained, this does not detract from the complex meditation that is chattily and charmingly presented throughout.