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Hiromi Kawakami (author), Ted Goossen (translator), People from My Neighbourhood, Granta Books, 2021. 96 pgs.
The world depicted in Kawakami Hiromi’s People from My Neighbourhood is at once familiar and yet imbued with an intriguing sense of unfamiliarity. With all thirty-six stories being short, they are comparable to the works found in Nobel Prize winner Kawabata Yasunari’s Palm-of-the-Hand Stories (or Tenohira no shōsetsu). The themes explored within the collection are local and quotidian. For instance, in “Chicken Hell”, the story is set on a farm surrounded by apartment blocks and houses, reminiscent of the contemporary Tokyo landscape. The character Kanae in “The Juvenile Delinquent”, as a woman in charge of a teenage biker gang known as Bōsōzoku, evokes memories of the 1980s, a period marked by the peak in the phenomenon’s popularity. This subcultural phenomenon has been recurrently depicted in Japanese manga, drama series, and movies such as Starting Today, It’s My Turn!! (or Kyō kara ore wa!!) and Hell’s Garden (or Jigoku no hanazono).
What makes Kawakami’s stories fascinating is the juxtaposition of the familiar and the unfamiliar. For example, the description of two shadows belonging to a grandfather in “Grandpa Shadows”, each bearing distinct personalities and seemingly attaching firmly to another person, may initially appear grotesque. Similarly, the death curse cast by Yōko on her homonymous sister in “The Rivals” creates an uncanny atmosphere, despite historical references to Yōko’s actions resembling rituals from the Edo period, such as her visit to the shrine at the ox hour and the method of hammering a nail onto a tree—a known practice for putting curses on hated individuals.
Another characteristic of the collection is its inconsistency within apparent unity. Despite the consistent use of a first-person narrative throughout the stories, the presence of a nameless narrator suggests the possibility of multiple perspectives rather than a singular voice. Just as Furugawa Hideo suggests in the “Afterword” (or Kaisetsu) of the Japanese version, the paradox becomes apparent when one reads “The Secret” and “Grandma” together: while the former states that the narrator has lived with a boy (presumably in her teens) for thirty years, the latter suggests a different storyline—the narrator always sees a boy younger than herself hiding at her grandma’s home.
Although recurring characters such as Akai Kiyoshi, the dog school principal, the taxi driver, and the lady running a bar called The Love appear in different stories, the narrative focus shifts. For example, while in “The School Principal”, the reader is privy to anecdotes and a brief biography of the dog school principal, in “Lord of the Flies”, the same character is mentioned just once, indicating his opposition to gambling. In “Sports Days”, he is portrayed as the victor in a fictional competition called “Sea Fare From Hell” (or noroi no amehurasi). Similarly, the lady transitions from being a central character in “The Love” to a lottery winner in “The Empress”. Such a shift of focus is consistent with the title of People from My Neighbourhood, which aims to portray the lives of various people within a community. Furthermore, it aligns with the trend seen in many postmodern narratives, where storytelling is often fragmented and characterised by instability.
The coexistence of both the familiar and the unfamiliar, including the shift of narrative and focus, is perhaps a noticeable feature of Kawakami Hiromi’s writing. In the “Afterword” of her Akutagawa Prize-winning novel Record of a Night Too Brief (original title: Hebi o fumu or 蛇を踏む), she confesses her penchant for writing “usobanashi”, roughly translated as “tales of lies”, in which she often intertwines the “nation of truth” with “the nation of lies”. She metaphorically describes these two realms as neighbours to each other.
In “Hebi o fumu,” the reader encounters a setting that initially appears quite realistic: a park where a woman, having survived on unemployment insurance after quitting a four-year teaching job, now works in a rosary shop. However, the plot takes a mysterious and grotesque turn when the woman transforms into a snake after accidentally treading on one. Similar traits can be found in People from My Neighbourhood, where characters undergo metamorphoses, such as a man transforming into flies in “The Lord of the Flies” and another afflicted with “Pigeonitis,” partially turning into a pigeon.
If one entertains the belief that the nameless narrator is inconsistent in the story collection, it draws parallels to Kawakami’s work Under the Eye of the Big Bird (original title: Ōkina tori ni sarawarenai yō or 大きな鳥にさらわれないよう), where the third-person narrative consistently shifts from one chapter to another. However, Kawakami seems to pursue different objectives in the two pieces. While People from My Neighbourhood creates a light, somewhat humorous nostalgic tone, Under the Eye of the Big Bird delves into a futuristic dystopian fantasy where human beings are on the brink of extinction and breeding methods have altered, relying heavily on artificial intelligence.
Under the axiom that no identical version can be produced when translating a text from one language to another, Ted Goossen presents a highly readable English interpretation of Kawakami’s original. It is impressive to see, for example, that Goossen decides to translate the two homonymous Yōko sisters as Yōko One and Yōko Two after briefly informing the reader that the characters respectively mean “sheep” and “enchantress”. Additionally, his choice to write the huge headlines in “Torture” in two lines and block letters to suggest a major accident happening may resonate more naturally with readers of English.
Meanwhile, the title People from My Neighbourhood, corresponding to the original “kono atari no hitotachi (or このあたりの人たち)”, might provoke questions regarding the identity of the first-person singular. This reinforces my belief in the changing first-person narrative within the text, as I mentioned at the beginning. Whether deliberate or not, it seems that the English title reduces the text to a singular, private recount of one’s neighbourhood, although the story collection itself suggests something different.
On another note, there is one clear discrepancy between the original and the English version. In the chapter originally titled “Yōsei”, when the narrator discusses a Music House and presents various hearsays about it, the first hearsay is attributed to the personal taxi driver (個人タクシーのおじさん). However, in the English version titled “The Elf”, the same proper noun is translated as “the dog school principal”, raising questions about whether there are multiple versions of the Japanese text or if it is a mistranslation.
Bibliography
Kawabata Yasunari (1971). Tenohira no shōsetsu 『掌の小説』Shinchō Bunko.
Kawakami Hiromi (2022[1999]). Hebi o fumu 『蛇を踏む』. Bunshun Bunko.
— (2019). Kono Atari no hitotachi 『このあたりの人たち』. Bunshun Bunko.
— (2019). Ōkina tori ni sarawarenai yō 『大きな鳥にさらわれないよう』. Kōdanshan Bunko.
How to cite: Au, James Kin-Pong. “Coexistence of the Familiar and the Unfamiliar: Hiromi Kawakami’s People from My Neighbourhood.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 30 Apr. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/04/30/my-neighbourhood.
James Kin-Pong Au is a Master’s graduate of both Hong Kong Baptist University and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Tokyo, writing his dissertation about the relation between history and literature through close readings of East Asian historical narratives in the 1960s. His research interests include Asian literatures, comparative literature, historical narratives and modern poetry. During his leisure time, he writes poetry and learns Spanish, Korean and Polish. He teaches English at Salesio Polytechnic College and literature in English at Tama Art University. [All contributions by James Kin-Pong Au.]