A Personal Matter
by
by
John Nathan (Translator)
Not in the Travel Brochures
Nothing about Japan, neither its culture nor its institutions, not to say its people, is portrayed with any sympathy in A Personal Matter. The tragedy of a grotesquely deformed child, while disconcerting and disruptive to everyone concerned - family, hospital staff, employer - is no more than that. “They were glimpsing an infinitesimal crack in the flat surface of everyday life and the sight filled them with innocent awe.”
The universal desire seems to be for escape, not just from one’s circumstances, or from the constraints of modern living, but from organic life itself. Everything about the human body is disgusting - from the description of female genitalia directly after birth, to the forced vomiting of the residue of a bottle of Scotch, to the ‘brain hernia’ of the child. Sex is either rape or routine self-indulgence. Eating is of the coarsest fast food. Sleep is a time of nightmares. Social relations are either violent or exploitative. Kindness is unknown.
All the characters are vaguely inhuman as well as inhumane. Bird, the protagonist, wanders the streets aimlessly and gets into fistfights while his wife is in labour. His ex-girlfriend, Himiko, when not having sex with strangers, meditates all day on a ramifying quantum universe, and drives her MG sports car around all night, equally aimlessly. The father-law-law, hearing of his deformed grandson’s birth, provides Bird with a bottle of whisky, knowing he is an alcoholic. The mother-in-law refuses even to make eye contact with Bird. Bird’s wife is a mere cypher of maternal concern.
The depth of thought, or lack of it, provoked by the situation is startling: “Does a vegetable suffer?” The child, at most, is a medical case study and interesting autopsy. At a time, one would expect, of intense grief, Bird’s principle worry is about himself: “Bird was terrified of being responsible for any mishap in the world of present time.” Kenzaburo seems to be locating the tragedy not with the infant but with the entire society in which the infant happens to appear.
So obviously this is not about A Personal Matter at all. The irony clearly is meant to enmesh all of Japanese life in this single incident. Can the redemptive decision of an individual make any difference? Beyond that it seems to me impossible for a non-Japanese to comment. Not a book, therefore, likely to be suggested reading by the Japanese Tourist Agency.
Nothing about Japan, neither its culture nor its institutions, not to say its people, is portrayed with any sympathy in A Personal Matter. The tragedy of a grotesquely deformed child, while disconcerting and disruptive to everyone concerned - family, hospital staff, employer - is no more than that. “They were glimpsing an infinitesimal crack in the flat surface of everyday life and the sight filled them with innocent awe.”
The universal desire seems to be for escape, not just from one’s circumstances, or from the constraints of modern living, but from organic life itself. Everything about the human body is disgusting - from the description of female genitalia directly after birth, to the forced vomiting of the residue of a bottle of Scotch, to the ‘brain hernia’ of the child. Sex is either rape or routine self-indulgence. Eating is of the coarsest fast food. Sleep is a time of nightmares. Social relations are either violent or exploitative. Kindness is unknown.
All the characters are vaguely inhuman as well as inhumane. Bird, the protagonist, wanders the streets aimlessly and gets into fistfights while his wife is in labour. His ex-girlfriend, Himiko, when not having sex with strangers, meditates all day on a ramifying quantum universe, and drives her MG sports car around all night, equally aimlessly. The father-law-law, hearing of his deformed grandson’s birth, provides Bird with a bottle of whisky, knowing he is an alcoholic. The mother-in-law refuses even to make eye contact with Bird. Bird’s wife is a mere cypher of maternal concern.
The depth of thought, or lack of it, provoked by the situation is startling: “Does a vegetable suffer?” The child, at most, is a medical case study and interesting autopsy. At a time, one would expect, of intense grief, Bird’s principle worry is about himself: “Bird was terrified of being responsible for any mishap in the world of present time.” Kenzaburo seems to be locating the tragedy not with the infant but with the entire society in which the infant happens to appear.
So obviously this is not about A Personal Matter at all. The irony clearly is meant to enmesh all of Japanese life in this single incident. Can the redemptive decision of an individual make any difference? Beyond that it seems to me impossible for a non-Japanese to comment. Not a book, therefore, likely to be suggested reading by the Japanese Tourist Agency.
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ February 14, 2018
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