tronella's review against another edition
4.0
As usual for Granta, not all of these were to my taste, but on the whole it's a good collection.
maroramos's review against another edition
4.0
Numa coletânea, gostamos mais de uns que de outros. Uma desvantagem (porque dificulta a nota) mas essencialmente uma vantagem para conhecer novos escritores e novas visões, especialmente do Japão pós Fukushima.
pilgrimbookstore89's review against another edition
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
4.25
graywacke's review against another edition
4.0
This was a nice little taste of modern Japanese literature, even if my favorite story was by Chinese-America author Tao Lin, where asks his Chinese parents about Japanese people. There is a lot of good stuff here, much of it apparently non-fiction personal essays.
Brief notes on each story or essay. My favorites have an asterisk.
Sayaka Murata - A Clean Marriage, translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori - short story
Definitely odd. A couple in a sexless marriage decide to get pregnant, told by the wife.
Toshiki Okada - Breakfast, translated from Japanese by Michael Emmerich - short story
Odd applies again. This is about the break-up of a marriage. The narrator’s wife flies in to Tokyo for less than a day only to meet with her husband to end the relationship.
David Mitchell - Variations on a Theme by Mister Donut – short story
A simple story in a donut shop told from several different points of view. Mildly entertaining.
*Ruth Ozeki – Linked – Personal essay
Ozeki writes about her grandfather, who was born in Japan, emigrated to Hawaii, and then, after four years of incarceration during WWII, having lost everything, returned to Japan. Her grandfather was a serious poet who wrote haikus. After her essay, she includes several of his haikus along with her own responses, which I found it well done.
*Kyoko Nakajima - Things Remembered and Things Forgotten, translated by Ian M. Macdonald - short story
Probably my favorite short story. It’s a bit odd in style, but it’s a simple story. An older man goes with his wife to meet his senile older brother in his nursing home. Then nostalgia brings him back to the dark days after WWII, where memory doesn’t exactly match reality.
*Tao Lin - Final Fantasy III – Personal Essay(?)
The American-Chinese author asks his parents about what they like about Japan.
Hiromi Kawakami - Blue Moon, translated from Japanese by Lucy North - personal essay(?)
A haiku poet’s experiences after being diagnosed with possible terminal cancer
*Hiroko Oyamada - Spider Lilies, translated from Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter - short story
Good stuff. The narrator meets her fiance's very strange grandmother who tells her some very strange stuff about spider lilies and breast milk. It's almost believable.
Pico Iyer - The Beauty of the Package - personal essay
Iyer explores Japanese culture through the actions in a Japanese wedding he attends. He is interested in the relationship between acting out the expression of a feeling and the actually feeling.
*Andrés Felipe Solano - Pig Skin, translated from Spanish by Nick Caistor - short story
Odd and entertaining - but odd in what i would consider a non-Japanese way. A Columbian on a ferry between Korea and Japan befriends a Korean who asks for some unusual favors.
Toh EnJoe – Printable, translated from Japanese by David G. Boyd - short story
Philosophical essay of sorts that begins with the narrator translating a long, unwritten work
*David Peace - After the War, Before the War: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa on The Bridge of Nine Turnings, in Shanghai, in 1921 - fictional biography
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was a real Japanese author and this is Peace’s fictional account of him from an incomplete novel. I found it fascinating to see a reflective Japanese point of view of Shanghai before the fighting started.
Adam Johnson, Scavengers - personal essay
About his experiences in North Korea and his curiosity in the story of a famous North Korean wrestler who was raised in and performed in Japan.
*Yukiko Motoya - The Dogs - short story
Wintering in self-chosen isolation, a woman gets attached to a pack of wild dogs, while only vaguely aware of the problems they are causing.
Rebecca Solnit - Arrival Gates - personal essay
After going to several disaster sights in Japan in some kind of work capacity, the author walks the orange gates of Fushimi Inari Taisha, a shrine in Kyoto.
*Tomoyuki Hoshino – Pink - short story
A young woman babysitting her niece during a heat wave gets caught up in communal spinning – as in spinning her body in circles. Enjoyed this, but the meaning is quite mysterious to me.
Brief notes on each story or essay. My favorites have an asterisk.
Sayaka Murata - A Clean Marriage, translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori - short story
Definitely odd. A couple in a sexless marriage decide to get pregnant, told by the wife.
Toshiki Okada - Breakfast, translated from Japanese by Michael Emmerich - short story
Odd applies again. This is about the break-up of a marriage. The narrator’s wife flies in to Tokyo for less than a day only to meet with her husband to end the relationship.
David Mitchell - Variations on a Theme by Mister Donut – short story
A simple story in a donut shop told from several different points of view. Mildly entertaining.
*Ruth Ozeki – Linked – Personal essay
Ozeki writes about her grandfather, who was born in Japan, emigrated to Hawaii, and then, after four years of incarceration during WWII, having lost everything, returned to Japan. Her grandfather was a serious poet who wrote haikus. After her essay, she includes several of his haikus along with her own responses, which I found it well done.
*Kyoko Nakajima - Things Remembered and Things Forgotten, translated by Ian M. Macdonald - short story
Probably my favorite short story. It’s a bit odd in style, but it’s a simple story. An older man goes with his wife to meet his senile older brother in his nursing home. Then nostalgia brings him back to the dark days after WWII, where memory doesn’t exactly match reality.
*Tao Lin - Final Fantasy III – Personal Essay(?)
The American-Chinese author asks his parents about what they like about Japan.
Hiromi Kawakami - Blue Moon, translated from Japanese by Lucy North - personal essay(?)
A haiku poet’s experiences after being diagnosed with possible terminal cancer
*Hiroko Oyamada - Spider Lilies, translated from Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter - short story
Good stuff. The narrator meets her fiance's very strange grandmother who tells her some very strange stuff about spider lilies and breast milk. It's almost believable.
Pico Iyer - The Beauty of the Package - personal essay
Iyer explores Japanese culture through the actions in a Japanese wedding he attends. He is interested in the relationship between acting out the expression of a feeling and the actually feeling.
*Andrés Felipe Solano - Pig Skin, translated from Spanish by Nick Caistor - short story
Odd and entertaining - but odd in what i would consider a non-Japanese way. A Columbian on a ferry between Korea and Japan befriends a Korean who asks for some unusual favors.
Toh EnJoe – Printable, translated from Japanese by David G. Boyd - short story
Philosophical essay of sorts that begins with the narrator translating a long, unwritten work
*David Peace - After the War, Before the War: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa on The Bridge of Nine Turnings, in Shanghai, in 1921 - fictional biography
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was a real Japanese author and this is Peace’s fictional account of him from an incomplete novel. I found it fascinating to see a reflective Japanese point of view of Shanghai before the fighting started.
Adam Johnson, Scavengers - personal essay
About his experiences in North Korea and his curiosity in the story of a famous North Korean wrestler who was raised in and performed in Japan.
*Yukiko Motoya - The Dogs - short story
Wintering in self-chosen isolation, a woman gets attached to a pack of wild dogs, while only vaguely aware of the problems they are causing.
Rebecca Solnit - Arrival Gates - personal essay
After going to several disaster sights in Japan in some kind of work capacity, the author walks the orange gates of Fushimi Inari Taisha, a shrine in Kyoto.
*Tomoyuki Hoshino – Pink - short story
A young woman babysitting her niece during a heat wave gets caught up in communal spinning – as in spinning her body in circles. Enjoyed this, but the meaning is quite mysterious to me.
clairelorraine's review against another edition
4.0
I liked this so much I'm thinking about subscribing!
curiousreader's review
4.0
A few duds but overall an excellent selection, by editor Yuka Igarashi, of weird and wonderful stories, poetry, and essays! Some personal favourites include The Dogs by Yukiko Motoya, Pink by Tomoyuki Hoshino, and Blue Moon by Hiromi Kawakami (but really, most of the pieces in here are wonderful!).
Full review: https://weneedhunny.wordpress.com/2016/06/29/granta-127-japan/
Full review: https://weneedhunny.wordpress.com/2016/06/29/granta-127-japan/
arirang's review
3.0
"It's not just that surface and depth are different here; but that you can't begin to infer one from the other." (Pico Iyer, The Beauty of the Package).
Granta 127, from Spring 2014, is the first volume I've read and I have mixed feelings about the format.
On the positive side, the Granta brandname is sufficiently powerful to line up an impressive array of authors - perhaps only The New Yorker has a better reach. From English-language writers, David Mitchell, Ruth Ozeki, David Peace and perhaps Kazuo Ishiguro would be the first four names I'd think of for a Japan edition, and to Granta's credit they've solicited contributions from the first three of these. And while the Japanese authors featured exclude the really big names (e.g. Ryu or Haruki Murakami, Oe), everyone included seems to have won one or the other of the prestiguous Akutagawa or Kenzaburo Oe prizes - I counted 3 of each - and anyway part of the attraction of Granta is to be introduced to new authors. And commendably this issue of Granta was published simultaneously in Japanese and English.
On the negative side, I'm no fan of short-story collections at the best of times, and even less so when written by a variety of authors with only the tenuous link of Japan as a theme, meaning the pieces fail to cohere.
Also I didn't really feel I gained any great insights into Japanese culture, beyond the obvious cliches, or into Japanese literature.
And as other reviewers have commented with some of the pieces feel dialled-in; one can almost imagine the conversation ("have you got anything on your pending/rejected spike that relates to Japan we could use?". And if no, "Anything you could somehow adapt to Japan?").
Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master's Son) is better known for writing about North Korea, so gives us a story about a Japanese man in that country.
In Final Fantasy III by Tao Lin, the author makes a virtue of it's flaws - he writes about how he (or the narrator, who strongly resembles him, if this is viewed as fiction) has to write an piece on Japan, and collects random thoughts from his Taiwanese parents ("it was a good sign in Japan if your husband stayed out every night as that was a sign your business was doing well") which reveal more about their prejudices than about Japan.
David Mitchell's Variations on a Theme by Mister Donut, which tells the story of a simple incident (old man suffering from dementia doesn't realise donut shop is self service) from perspectives of multiple characters. It's quite amusing and well structured, but the cast manages to cover almost almost ever cliche about Japanese people and indeed foreigners in Japan.
On the stronger side, Ruth Ozeki has submitted a moving if brief tribute to her maternal grandfather. "I'm not a poet in English, never mind in Japanese, and the spare, concise haiku form continues to confound me. But I had an idea of translating some of his poems (loosely) and responding to them (roughly), in order to make a kind of renga, a linked verse, across time." And an amusing anecdote about how a "well-intentioned" US schoolteacher assumed "that being half-Japanese I would have a special aptitude" for haikus.
I most enjoyed the Beauty of the Package, an essay on Japanese packaged-wedding culture (including the fascinating Narita Divorces), concludes. "Is that the Japanese secret? That the emotions we find when rehearsed may be at least as powerful - as real - as the ones we so cherish for their spontaneity and distinctness? That somebody's else's model, honed and perfected over centuries, may be better and wiser than the one we've come up with ourselves last month?".
Disappointingly, the stories by Japanese authors appealed least, perhaps because they were even less coherent to the theme other than the nationality of the author, and I didn't go away particularly wanting to hunt down further works by any of the authors included, which means Granta 127 failed in one major respect.
And the colourful art included added absolutely nothing for me - other than to the cover price (see below) - but that perhaps reflects my personal preferences.
Overall, an enjoyable read but really something to dip-in-and-out of than read cover to cover, and, while I seldom comment on book prices, quite expensive (£13RRP) for what is ultimately the same length as a paperback novel.
Granta 127, from Spring 2014, is the first volume I've read and I have mixed feelings about the format.
On the positive side, the Granta brandname is sufficiently powerful to line up an impressive array of authors - perhaps only The New Yorker has a better reach. From English-language writers, David Mitchell, Ruth Ozeki, David Peace and perhaps Kazuo Ishiguro would be the first four names I'd think of for a Japan edition, and to Granta's credit they've solicited contributions from the first three of these. And while the Japanese authors featured exclude the really big names (e.g. Ryu or Haruki Murakami, Oe), everyone included seems to have won one or the other of the prestiguous Akutagawa or Kenzaburo Oe prizes - I counted 3 of each - and anyway part of the attraction of Granta is to be introduced to new authors. And commendably this issue of Granta was published simultaneously in Japanese and English.
On the negative side, I'm no fan of short-story collections at the best of times, and even less so when written by a variety of authors with only the tenuous link of Japan as a theme, meaning the pieces fail to cohere.
Also I didn't really feel I gained any great insights into Japanese culture, beyond the obvious cliches, or into Japanese literature.
And as other reviewers have commented with some of the pieces feel dialled-in; one can almost imagine the conversation ("have you got anything on your pending/rejected spike that relates to Japan we could use?". And if no, "Anything you could somehow adapt to Japan?").
Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master's Son) is better known for writing about North Korea, so gives us a story about a Japanese man in that country.
In Final Fantasy III by Tao Lin, the author makes a virtue of it's flaws - he writes about how he (or the narrator, who strongly resembles him, if this is viewed as fiction) has to write an piece on Japan, and collects random thoughts from his Taiwanese parents ("it was a good sign in Japan if your husband stayed out every night as that was a sign your business was doing well") which reveal more about their prejudices than about Japan.
David Mitchell's Variations on a Theme by Mister Donut, which tells the story of a simple incident (old man suffering from dementia doesn't realise donut shop is self service) from perspectives of multiple characters. It's quite amusing and well structured, but the cast manages to cover almost almost ever cliche about Japanese people and indeed foreigners in Japan.
On the stronger side, Ruth Ozeki has submitted a moving if brief tribute to her maternal grandfather. "I'm not a poet in English, never mind in Japanese, and the spare, concise haiku form continues to confound me. But I had an idea of translating some of his poems (loosely) and responding to them (roughly), in order to make a kind of renga, a linked verse, across time." And an amusing anecdote about how a "well-intentioned" US schoolteacher assumed "that being half-Japanese I would have a special aptitude" for haikus.
I most enjoyed the Beauty of the Package, an essay on Japanese packaged-wedding culture (including the fascinating Narita Divorces), concludes. "Is that the Japanese secret? That the emotions we find when rehearsed may be at least as powerful - as real - as the ones we so cherish for their spontaneity and distinctness? That somebody's else's model, honed and perfected over centuries, may be better and wiser than the one we've come up with ourselves last month?".
Disappointingly, the stories by Japanese authors appealed least, perhaps because they were even less coherent to the theme other than the nationality of the author, and I didn't go away particularly wanting to hunt down further works by any of the authors included, which means Granta 127 failed in one major respect.
And the colourful art included added absolutely nothing for me - other than to the cover price (see below) - but that perhaps reflects my personal preferences.
Overall, an enjoyable read but really something to dip-in-and-out of than read cover to cover, and, while I seldom comment on book prices, quite expensive (£13RRP) for what is ultimately the same length as a paperback novel.
slaepwerigne's review
highlights: a clean marriage (sayaka murata), spider lillies (hiroko oyamada), pig skin (andres felipe solano), scavengers (adam johnson), the dogs (yukiko motoya)
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