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3.28 AVERAGE
3.28 AVERAGE
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Hiromi Kawakami is one of my just read authors, her writing holds a bewitching mood that is impossible to escape, each book I've read feels outside of time. While there might be recognisable signs and places, feelings and dreams, it feels completely removed from life, transporting you to somewhere beyond. This is highlighted in Dragon Palace in the breaking apart of taboo, from tentical porn adjacent stories to a younger brother drinking the milk of his sister. Though weird and typically wrong, because her writing feels outside of life it doesn't make you squirm as it would on a screen. None of it feels gratuitous either, it felt more like breaking apart the preconceived ideas of how life is to explore what's underneath.
Though this was for sure not my favourite Kawakami, it still held the mystifying candour that I love so much.
Though this was for sure not my favourite Kawakami, it still held the mystifying candour that I love so much.
Although humans like to think of ourselves as above the animal kingdom, we are still animals. With Hiromi Kawakami, we often find any distinction between human and animal to be rather tenuous, and in the eight stories found in her collection Dragon Palace, we not only find the characters’ personal identities to often be in flux and ambiguous but also their animalistic identity. ‘Each and every home contains at least one member who has something inhuman about them,’ a character advises in one story, and we see a spectrum of characters ranging from definitely human, to transitioning from animal to human, and many others who openly announce ‘I am not human.’ This new release, translated by [a:Ted Goossen|7353265|Ted Goossen|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1599533152p2/7353265.jpg], is actually a collection mostly drawing from Hiromi Kawakami’s earlier stories but they all fit together quite nicely with overarching themes and an overall narrative feeling approaching folklore. An octopus becomes a human sex pest, an older woman commands a cult with sex, moles care for depressed humans, humans care for humans that might also be foxes, kitchens have gods living under the stove and more fantastical and fascinating occurrences go on in this collection. With gendered examinations on sexuality (often brushing up against the taboo) and sexual power dynamics, and a look at identity in outlandish situations, Hiromi Kawakami’s Dragon Palace is chock full of dark charm.
I’ve long loved the quietness of Kawakami’s narratives, the way she can make loneliness snuggle up with you like a cat on your lap, and the way a character’s day to day can shimmer in nearly overwhelming bittersweet emotion. There is certainly another side to her as well where she can crack open the world and pour out a dark magic that awaits just beneath the surface. Dragon Palace finds itself among the latter, feeling much more like [b:Record of a Night Too Brief|32931335|Record of a Night Too Brief|Hiromi Kawakami|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1478688189l/32931335._SY75_.jpg|71036407] or the interconnected stories of People From My Neighborhood than, say, my personal favorite The Nakano Thrift Shop. Which isn’t a bad thing, I quite enjoy the whimsicality she finds in the bizarre and her ability to write stories that feel like folklore just outside of full understanding, I just tend to really love the softness of her writing in the former. Though I wonder, perhaps, how much of that is the brilliance of [a:Allison Markin Powell|2744065|Allison Markin Powell|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]’s translation, whereas both this and People From My Neighborhood were Goossen and have a more detatched feel to them not unlike how [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615497402p2/3354.jpg] comes across in his (or really any other translator’s) translation. Not that this is necessarily negative, as it seamlessly moves between normal reality and the more bizarre moments without making them feel out of place which is a really key aspect to capture in her stories.
Like most of her work, Dragon Palace often steers situations towards the sexual and there appears to be a few themes for her explorations of it. Large age gaps are often present, such as in her beloved Strange Weather in Tokyo, and in Fox’s Den we read about a caretaker for the elderly who slowly falls into a sexual relationship with a man twice her age (after having earlier chastised him for sexual harassment) as well as the story Shimazaki where a woman falls in love with her ancestor who is now over 400 years old. With the latter, the idea seems to use romantic love to probe our ideas of what familial love is by approaching taboos, which is also common for Kawakami. I did find [b:The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino|46205497|The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino|Hiromi Kawakami|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1559951894l/46205497._SY75_.jpg|1939745] to be rather problematic in this way though here it feels more symbolic like in a fairy tale. The story The Roar details the life of a character who is passed amongst his sisters, feeding from their breasts and marrying one of them. While I think “sister” is meant loosely here (maybe?), I’m curious why breastfeeding from an older sister is something that has now appeared in multiple of her books (it is used to convey the closeness of Nishino with his sister in [b:The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino|46205497|The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino|Hiromi Kawakami|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1559951894l/46205497._SY75_.jpg|1939745] as well).
As with much of the more bizarre aspects in her more magical tales, Kawakami seems to be pushing the envelope on ideas of relationships and love into the taboo as a sort of social commentary on how couched our ideas are in social norms. I don’t, however, find it nearly as effective as, say, [a:Sayaka Murata|8816506|Sayaka Murata|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1522684114p2/8816506.jpg] who puts her finger more directly on the topic and guides the reader towards that understanding in what is usually a more shocking manner.
Though the stories here certainly explore sexual power dynamics through many of these moments. Two of the stronger stories bookend this collection and both feature an animal that has turned human, the first being an octopus who became a man in order to seduce women and the latter being a sea horse who was drawn to the love of a man and has spent decades being objectified and passed from husband to husband as a sort of trophy (it made me want to revisit [a:Cassandra Khaw|13994108|Cassandra Khaw|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1675976484p2/13994108.jpg]’s The Salt Grows Heavy which opens with a revenge tale of sorts for that type of situation). The juxtaposition takes a stab at the way unequal sexual power dynamics are often socially normalized such as the narrator engaging in some rather misogynistic bonding and finding it completely normal, even ‘liberating’ as he says.
Which is all undeniably gross and I’m certain the woman they chase through the streets as she runs for her safety does not find the experience liberating. Nor does the sea horse turned woman find being objectified to be liberating and instead seeks to return to the ocean, as does her daughter (that her sons have no ocean-tendencies but the daughter seems so much like her nudges the theme as well). In Kawakami stories we notice the taboo sexuality, though the fact that sex can often be a horror story for women who are assaulted, objectified or otherwise abused is something that is commonplace. The Kitchen God, for instance, has a sexual assault occur late in the story that passes with hardly any recognition (that aside, it is easily my favorite story in the collection, following a young woman with kleptomania and the society of older women in her housing complex, but also a kitchen god spirit). The title story Dragon Palace, however, throws the dynamic out of whack and features a woman revered like a cult leader who uses sexuality to keep her followers in line, and they in turn using it against her.
‘I didn't know my own name. I didn't know why I had been born into this world. I had no idea what would become of me.’
Though not everything about this collection is entirely sexual, don’t let me give the wrong impression. A rather charming story tilted Mole features—you guessed it!—a mole who picks up depressed humans and brings them into his hole until they recover. The humans have ‘lost the energy to stay alive,’ but ‘ this does not mean they are dead. Apparently, dying requires actual strength,’ and when he identifies their condition they shrink down to a size that can fit in his pocket. This story also addresses the ideas of animals in our own society, with him working an office job long enough that people mostly don’t notice anymore. I like the tenderness of this one as well and shows a strong idea of community because the loss of human to this condition has a ripple effect:
This loss of substance seems to permeate this collection, with ideas of identity being a sort of substance the characters are unsure what to do with. The octopus, for instance, is unsure if he is octopus or man at times and feels he’s lost that connection to the ocean (likely why he often shifts into ‘an undulating, shape-shifting blob’ with the frail grasp on identity), and much of The Roar deals with having no idea of ones own purpose. Are we animals just following instinct and surviving, or are we some grand idea of humans with a purpose, and does chasing the belief in the latter lead us to despair?
Hiromi Kawakami is a drop-everything-to-read author for me and I’m glad I did that with Dragon Palace despite being a tad underwhelmed at times. That said, I read this fairly slowly which seemed to help, as I’d often find myself thinking of the stories for several days and enjoying them more the longer I turned them over in my head. She has such a wonderful use of whimsicality, and while these are rather dark stories they still feel effervescent in the mind while you read them. A strange yet ultimately satisfying collection.
3.5/5
I’ve long loved the quietness of Kawakami’s narratives, the way she can make loneliness snuggle up with you like a cat on your lap, and the way a character’s day to day can shimmer in nearly overwhelming bittersweet emotion. There is certainly another side to her as well where she can crack open the world and pour out a dark magic that awaits just beneath the surface. Dragon Palace finds itself among the latter, feeling much more like [b:Record of a Night Too Brief|32931335|Record of a Night Too Brief|Hiromi Kawakami|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1478688189l/32931335._SY75_.jpg|71036407] or the interconnected stories of People From My Neighborhood than, say, my personal favorite The Nakano Thrift Shop. Which isn’t a bad thing, I quite enjoy the whimsicality she finds in the bizarre and her ability to write stories that feel like folklore just outside of full understanding, I just tend to really love the softness of her writing in the former. Though I wonder, perhaps, how much of that is the brilliance of [a:Allison Markin Powell|2744065|Allison Markin Powell|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]’s translation, whereas both this and People From My Neighborhood were Goossen and have a more detatched feel to them not unlike how [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615497402p2/3354.jpg] comes across in his (or really any other translator’s) translation. Not that this is necessarily negative, as it seamlessly moves between normal reality and the more bizarre moments without making them feel out of place which is a really key aspect to capture in her stories.
Like most of her work, Dragon Palace often steers situations towards the sexual and there appears to be a few themes for her explorations of it. Large age gaps are often present, such as in her beloved Strange Weather in Tokyo, and in Fox’s Den we read about a caretaker for the elderly who slowly falls into a sexual relationship with a man twice her age (after having earlier chastised him for sexual harassment) as well as the story Shimazaki where a woman falls in love with her ancestor who is now over 400 years old. With the latter, the idea seems to use romantic love to probe our ideas of what familial love is by approaching taboos, which is also common for Kawakami. I did find [b:The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino|46205497|The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino|Hiromi Kawakami|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1559951894l/46205497._SY75_.jpg|1939745] to be rather problematic in this way though here it feels more symbolic like in a fairy tale. The story The Roar details the life of a character who is passed amongst his sisters, feeding from their breasts and marrying one of them. While I think “sister” is meant loosely here (maybe?), I’m curious why breastfeeding from an older sister is something that has now appeared in multiple of her books (it is used to convey the closeness of Nishino with his sister in [b:The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino|46205497|The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino|Hiromi Kawakami|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1559951894l/46205497._SY75_.jpg|1939745] as well).
As with much of the more bizarre aspects in her more magical tales, Kawakami seems to be pushing the envelope on ideas of relationships and love into the taboo as a sort of social commentary on how couched our ideas are in social norms. I don’t, however, find it nearly as effective as, say, [a:Sayaka Murata|8816506|Sayaka Murata|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1522684114p2/8816506.jpg] who puts her finger more directly on the topic and guides the reader towards that understanding in what is usually a more shocking manner.
Though the stories here certainly explore sexual power dynamics through many of these moments. Two of the stronger stories bookend this collection and both feature an animal that has turned human, the first being an octopus who became a man in order to seduce women and the latter being a sea horse who was drawn to the love of a man and has spent decades being objectified and passed from husband to husband as a sort of trophy (it made me want to revisit [a:Cassandra Khaw|13994108|Cassandra Khaw|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1675976484p2/13994108.jpg]’s The Salt Grows Heavy which opens with a revenge tale of sorts for that type of situation). The juxtaposition takes a stab at the way unequal sexual power dynamics are often socially normalized such as the narrator engaging in some rather misogynistic bonding and finding it completely normal, even ‘liberating’ as he says.
‘I felt strangely liberated. I stood there assigning numbers and adjectives to each woman that came by, one after another. In the process, they stopped being individuals with personalities and real lives.’
Which is all undeniably gross and I’m certain the woman they chase through the streets as she runs for her safety does not find the experience liberating. Nor does the sea horse turned woman find being objectified to be liberating and instead seeks to return to the ocean, as does her daughter (that her sons have no ocean-tendencies but the daughter seems so much like her nudges the theme as well). In Kawakami stories we notice the taboo sexuality, though the fact that sex can often be a horror story for women who are assaulted, objectified or otherwise abused is something that is commonplace. The Kitchen God, for instance, has a sexual assault occur late in the story that passes with hardly any recognition (that aside, it is easily my favorite story in the collection, following a young woman with kleptomania and the society of older women in her housing complex, but also a kitchen god spirit). The title story Dragon Palace, however, throws the dynamic out of whack and features a woman revered like a cult leader who uses sexuality to keep her followers in line, and they in turn using it against her.
‘I didn't know my own name. I didn't know why I had been born into this world. I had no idea what would become of me.’
Though not everything about this collection is entirely sexual, don’t let me give the wrong impression. A rather charming story tilted Mole features—you guessed it!—a mole who picks up depressed humans and brings them into his hole until they recover. The humans have ‘lost the energy to stay alive,’ but ‘ this does not mean they are dead. Apparently, dying requires actual strength,’ and when he identifies their condition they shrink down to a size that can fit in his pocket. This story also addresses the ideas of animals in our own society, with him working an office job long enough that people mostly don’t notice anymore. I like the tenderness of this one as well and shows a strong idea of community because the loss of human to this condition has a ripple effect:
‘If left alone, they hollow out. First, they themselves, then the place where they stand, then ultimately the entire area around them empties. All real substance is lost.’
This loss of substance seems to permeate this collection, with ideas of identity being a sort of substance the characters are unsure what to do with. The octopus, for instance, is unsure if he is octopus or man at times and feels he’s lost that connection to the ocean (likely why he often shifts into ‘an undulating, shape-shifting blob’ with the frail grasp on identity), and much of The Roar deals with having no idea of ones own purpose. Are we animals just following instinct and surviving, or are we some grand idea of humans with a purpose, and does chasing the belief in the latter lead us to despair?
Hiromi Kawakami is a drop-everything-to-read author for me and I’m glad I did that with Dragon Palace despite being a tad underwhelmed at times. That said, I read this fairly slowly which seemed to help, as I’d often find myself thinking of the stories for several days and enjoying them more the longer I turned them over in my head. She has such a wonderful use of whimsicality, and while these are rather dark stories they still feel effervescent in the mind while you read them. A strange yet ultimately satisfying collection.
3.5/5
this collection is overall very very strange and that definitely grew on me by the end of the book. i think there is a lot of love in the book, in all forms, and despite all the magic realism and mythological settings, the way the author writes that love and the characters and all gives a very "this is the human condition" feeling, which i appreciate. the other thing is that all the sexual content, the rape, the incest, etc. is all portrayed in such a matter of fact way; if you're looking for explorations of how that affects people, you're definitely not gonna get it here; i feel like the writing of these stories as a whole gives off a very nihilistic sort of perspective. there are no consequences, things just happen, the world goes on. at the same time i didn't feel like any of this was meant to be particularly titillating, which is interesting considering the frequency in which some of these topics occur in these stories lol. another thing that i'm not sure was really the point of these stories at all, but an interesting theme i think was the role of sex in interpersonal relationships; some characters feel entitled (the guy in the kitchen god, the guy in the roar, some of the men in sea horse), but in shimazaki and fox's den perhaps it serves as the backdrop to their relationships, they still quote-unquote love without any of that. i also appreciated the sort of outside perspective on humans and humanity in some of the stories, and how i dont think any of the non-humans characters ever wanted to become human nor stayed that way.
hokusai: kinda mid, i didn't really get it or the humour tbh. interesting premise. surprisingly i think this was the only short story that made me uncomfortable.
dragon palace: i liked it a little bit more than hokusai, i didn't really get the ending. not the most memorable tbh.
fox's den: i liked the way the yokai merged into the people, and the weird relationships
the kitchen god: this one was real fun, the way the other people viewed the kitchen god as a weasel, was it actually a weasel or not? the eating drywall, very fun.
mole: this one was a banger, i didn't catch the title at the start so it took me a while to realize they were moles. i loved how they viewed humanity and how they took care of the depressed ones, the way moles also had to go to work etc, did that come before or after humans? i didn't 100% get the ending about the glowing, but it was a fun (if partially confusing) read
the roar: very strange. my theory is that it's some kind of origin story, given that the narrator doesn't know his mother & all his sisters simply announce that without any particular connection etc.
shimazaki: i think what i liked most about this story was the way the narrator described what she liked about her ancestor, despite his old age; sort of a love between two old people type thing which i find nice (aside from the possible incest?) also an interesting imagination on society with even longer lifespans lol.
sea horse: honestly probably one of my favourites in this collection. i loved the overview of the woman's life, you could sort of get a sense of time and passing through the ages with her husbands. her interactions with her daughter and the dead one was interesting. i was curious about her relationship with the current husband. i felt that the way she decided she wanted to go back to the sea was abrupt--why now? but also maybe it doesn't matter.
edit: just so i dont forget to bring it up in book club...
post book club edit: one theory that we settled on (that i remember) was that family (wrt all the incest) in these books wasn't necessarily blood-relation but more so a stand-in for people who generally share the same ideology or perspective, etc., due to the very small casts in these stories (although short stories typically have smaller casts than novels...) and the way the author seems to decouple the act of sex from the idea of procreation & stereotypical/traditional familial roles... there also seems to be a heavy theme of nostalgia or hanging on to/returning to the past, which i think familial relationships also sort of helps serve that purpose... but who knows maybe the author is just really into this shit. there is also the (quite likely) possibility that we are missing some important cultural context through this translation as a lot of the stories seem to refer heavily to japanese myth/tradition/culture. idk this book is something else, i don't think i've ever read something quite like it
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest, Sexual assault, Sexual content
It was written in almost a dream-like way. There were many things unexplained, and the sequence almost felt like out of one of your dreams. At the same time, there was something inexplicably raw about this book. Maybe it was the topics discussed, the casual descriptions of triggering topics, or the fact that these topics were left to the audience as to how to interpret.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content, Sexual harassment
Minor: Child abuse
I like weird but this is the kind of weird that’s actually just boring. There was a lot of casual rape and incest and I still don’t get why.
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced