‘Dragon Palace’ by Hiromi Kawakami (Review)

After a rather masculine set of books covered for #JanuaryInJapan last week, this week will see some more feminine J-Lit reviewed, with a look at some books by several familiar faces.  First up today, we’ll be examining a set of short stories by one of the best-known contemporary Japanese writers, but where some of her work verges on the romantic and nostalgic, this book verges on the whimsical, surreal even.  Let’s take a walk on the wild side, then, and meet some people who live life a little differently, often with a touch of animal magic 😉

*****
Hiromi Kawakami has had several popular and successful works brought into English (e.g. Strange Weather in Tokyo (The Briefcase) and The Nakano Thrift Shop), but her latest work in translation is something a little different.  Courtesy of Stone Bridge Press and their Monkey imprint, let me introduce you to Dragon Palace (translated by Ted Goossen, review copy courtesy of the publisher).  Featuring eight slightly bizarre stories with a magical realism twist, it’s probably more similar to the People from my Neighbourhood collection of micro-stories than to the novels she’s known for.

The bizarre mood starts in the very first story, ‘Hokusai’, when a man standing on a beach is approached by a stranger.  After somehow being persuaded to stand him a drink or two, the narrator is then ‘treated’ to a tall tale, one with a rather unusual beginning:

“I was an octopus back then,” he began.  “So, my story could be called an octopus’s great adventure.”
p.13, ‘Hokusai’ (Stone Bridge Press/MONKEY, 2023)

No, this isn’t a metaphor, and as the narrator listens to his new friend’s yarn, he can see his shape morphing between human and octopus (although that could just be the booze…).

This is just the first of many pieces featuring people who are not who they appear to be.  In ‘Fox’s Den’, a woman caring for an old man begins to suspect there’s more to him (and his yowling…) than meets the eye, while ‘Sea Horse’ is narrated by a woman who is passed around from husband to husband, but always kept far away from the sea.  Because she used to be a sea horse, of course…

At times, any vestige of realism is flung aside, leaving us with a completely magical style.  ‘Shimazaki’, for example, is a (very) slow-burning love story between an old woman and her 400-year-old ancestor, and the title piece, ‘Dragon Palace’, has a woman being visited by a tiny woman claiming to be her great-grandmother.  This is just the frame for great-granny’s tale of life as a woman surrounded by devotees, speaking in tongues and having sex all over the place!

The otherworldly, fairytale feel is even more evident in ‘The Roar’.  This one has a boy growing up in the company of his seven sisters, all very different, in a large house which is his entire world.  As it turns out, it’s a rather dark one, though, and as he makes his way from room to room, and sister to sister, he grows up against a backdrop of incest, murder and copious amounts of vomiting.  Honest.

A couple of the stories hint at more realistic concerns, with the writer examining societal issues (albeit through a rather distorted lens).  In a similar vein to some of our #JanuaryInJapan looks at Japanese domestic life (such as Mild Vertigo and Weasels in the Attic), the protagonist of ‘The Kitchen God’ makes her way through her slightly dull days.  How?  By shoplifting, sleeping with a man for money, eating stuff she peels off her wall and talking to her neighbours:

We call one another okusan.  An okusan has blemish-free skin and muscular arms.  She puts her Co-op order in a reusable bag and lugs it up to her apartment.  I stuff my order – Co-op ketchup and Co-op mini donuts this time around – in my tote bag and trudge up the staircase.
‘The Kitchen God’, p.73

Her only company at home is the kitchen god living under her fridge, at which point you may still be unsure whether this story has come to celebrate single female life or condemn it.

The only story from the collection I’d read previously was ‘Mole’ (Michael Emmerich penned an earlier translation under the title ‘Mogera Wogura’ in The Paris Review).  Here we have a mole working in an ordinary Tokyo office (as you do), one with an unusual hobby:

I began picking them up a few years ago, collecting those who in their weakness had collapsed, and putting them in my pockets.  Since I began doing that, my nights have become a whirlwind of activity.  I write down the order I should follow in my notebook and then make my rounds.  They basically remain in one place, so it’s easy to snag them.
‘The Mole’, p.103

So what is he catching?  Mice?  Cockroaches?  No – it turns out that he’s keeping an eye out for humans who can’t cope with modern city life, providing them with a bit of respite from the rigours of the modern working world.

Dragon Palace may appear light on the surface, but there’s more to the book than meets the eye, and it reminds me a lot of Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny, another set of modern fairytales with a dark side.  There are traces of Japanese folklore scattered throughout the stories, as well as suggestions of the pain of modern life, requiring a touch of the fantastic in order to cope.  A word of warning – Kawakami rarely shies away from descriptions of sex and nudity, so if that’s not for you, don’t say you haven’t been told.

The only real surprise here (and this seems to be a theme running throughout this year’s #JanuaryInJapan reading) is that this is not a recent release.  In fact, the book originally appeared in Japan back in 2002.  Given Kawakami’s relative success in English-language translation, I’m not sure why it’s taken this long to make it into the Anglosphere.  However, better late than never, and it makes for an excellent addition to her body of work in English.

Kudos, then, to Stone Bridge Press and MONKEY.  This was the second release for the imprint (after Hiromi Itō’s The Thorn Puller), and for those who like the sound of what they’ve brought out so far, there’s another due out in May, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa’s Takaoka’s Travels, described as “a fantasy set in the ninth century”.  Having enjoyed the first two books in the series, I’m looking forward to it – I suspect it will keep up the trend of being something ever so slightly different…