Delicate story of crisis and shaping one's own karma

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

KINSHU: AUTUMN BROCADE

By Teru Miyamoto

Translated by Roger K. Thomas

New Directions, $22.95, 224 pages

REVIEWED BY ANNA CHAMBERS

Near the beginning of Teru Miyamoto's "Kinshu: An Autumn Brocade," a very "typically Japanese" book seems to wait for us when we find the following: "The whole mountain wasn't covered with crimson foliage -- patches of bright red flowed past on both sides of the gondola, interspersed with evergreens, trees with brown leaves, and ginkgo-like trees with golden leaves . . . .

"I was intoxicated with the intense blaze of autumn leaves and definitely felt something threatening in it, rather like the quiet, cool blade of a knife. Perhaps our unexpected meeting reawakened my girlish tendency to fantasize." We are reminded of the delicate Japanese prints that famously awed and influenced Monet and his fellow Impressionists with their finely detailed awareness of man's environment and their subtle commentary on the fragile balancing act of human life.

Teru Miyamoto, however, does not simply hew to our idea of Japanese art. His characters in "Kinshu" struggle just as much with modernity and its jarring interconnections and disconnections as any character offered by 20th century European literature. Though the characters do express their emotions covertly -- we are well aware that these are not frank, effusive Americans -- they are less willing to accede to the inevitability of silence or to acquiesce in the carefully balanced tranquility most familiar to us in Japanese fine art. They seek resolution, and resolution comes through the startling -- and sudden -- explanations of two former spouses, Katsunama Aki and Arima Yasuaki.

Though he has been winning awards in Japan for years (including Japan's most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize) and has had several works translated into French, this is Teru Miyamoto's first book to appear in English. Foreign film aficionados may remember "Maboros," a 1995 film based on a book by Mr. Miyamoto. "River of Fireflies," another film, also uses the story from one of his novels. Youthful obsessions with a beautiful girl, suicides of lovers or spouses and grieving mothers are common in his work. We can be grateful that our first chance at his work in English comprises so many of the author's concerns. New Directions is to be applauded for their characteristically astute choice.