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A review by yuefei
Toddler Hunting and Other Stories by Taeko Kōno
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I feel like this is one of those writings that loses more in the process of translation than it gains, which is ironic(?) given that Kōno's stories are partly built upon Japan's complex reception of the texts on sexuality which were so constitutive for European modernity (e.g., Freud, de Sade, de Beauvoir, etc.). A loooot of anglophone readers seem to dismiss this as inscrutably strange and excessively grotesque—a rly typical way for contemporary "westerners" to consume Japan—or, on the other hand, affirm it as a positive feminist portrait of desire and freedom. The second reading is a bit closer to "the truth", which, for me, delves into finding (or attempting to find) agency within the constrictions of gender (which aren't so easy to shake off because they are the bindings that connect a person to the social world).
This "agency" seems to find itself in both the flesh and the imagination, and often it takes the vague form of the desire for self-immolation (like a displacement of some unbearable intensity). There's also a lot about the things unsaid, that can't be said (which Kōno depicts more effectively than Woolf's The Voyage Out), and the distances in relations of intimacy. The language is prosaic and everyday, but traces of the poetic (or the real) linger, subdued, under the surface of things, constantly threatening to rupture that very surface—and maybe this is the key to Kōno's elliptically mundane approach; her writings are ripples gradually swelling into waves, but the stories cut off somewhere before the breaking of the waves, before that point where language fails.
"The girl and her father walked on until they reached a bridge, where they stopped for a while. The river, once full of shimmering reflections from the shining neon night sky, now lay in complete darkness. Only the faint rippling of the water could be heard as the river flowing out to sea rose slowly with the incoming tide." p. 45. This is the way "Full Tide", a coming-of-age story revolving around the war, ends—before the war even begins.
Favourite story is still "Snow", but "Full Tide", "Final Moments", "Conjurer", and parts of "Night Journey" and "Bone Meat" are defo highlights.
This "agency" seems to find itself in both the flesh and the imagination, and often it takes the vague form of the desire for self-immolation (like a displacement of some unbearable intensity). There's also a lot about the things unsaid, that can't be said (which Kōno depicts more effectively than Woolf's The Voyage Out), and the distances in relations of intimacy. The language is prosaic and everyday, but traces of the poetic (or the real) linger, subdued, under the surface of things, constantly threatening to rupture that very surface—and maybe this is the key to Kōno's elliptically mundane approach; her writings are ripples gradually swelling into waves, but the stories cut off somewhere before the breaking of the waves, before that point where language fails.
"The girl and her father walked on until they reached a bridge, where they stopped for a while. The river, once full of shimmering reflections from the shining neon night sky, now lay in complete darkness. Only the faint rippling of the water could be heard as the river flowing out to sea rose slowly with the incoming tide." p. 45. This is the way "Full Tide", a coming-of-age story revolving around the war, ends—before the war even begins.
Favourite story is still "Snow", but "Full Tide", "Final Moments", "Conjurer", and parts of "Night Journey" and "Bone Meat" are defo highlights.