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Maki Kashimada: Touring the Land of the Dead: Two Novellas

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Maki Kashimada Touring the Land of the Dead: Two Novellas

Touring the Land of the Dead: Two Novellas: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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A story from one of Japan’s rising literary stars about memory, loss, and love, Touring the Land of the Dead is a mesmerizing combination of two tales, both told with stylistic inventiveness and breathtaking sensitivity. Taichi was forced to stop working almost a decade ago and since then he and his wife Natsuko have been getting by on her part-time wages. But Natsuko is a woman accustomed to hardship. When her own family’s fortune dried up years during her childhood, she, her brother, and her mother lived a surreal hand-to-mouth existence shaped by her mother’s refusal to accept their new station in life. One day, Natsuko sees an ad for a spa and recognizes the place as the former luxury hotel that Natsuko’s grandfather had taken her mother to when she was little. She decides to take her damaged husband to the spa, despite the cost, but their time there triggers hard but ultimately redemptive memories relating to the complicated history of her family. The overnight trip becomes a voyage into the netherworld—a journey to the doors of death and back to life. Modelled on a classic story by Junichiro Tanizaki, Ninety-Nine Kisses is the second story in this book and it portrays in touching and lyrical fashion the lives of the four unmarried sisters in a historical, close-knit neighbourhood of contemporary Tokyo.

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The memories washed over her. That florid scene of out-of-fashion dresses called to mind a cheap hostess bar. Her brother, freshly employed, was ecstatic at having gotten his hands on his first credit card. He had always loved hostess bars. Let’s have some fun in town, he said, deciding just like that to take her out to a club.

The attack began late at night, after their mother had gone to sleep. “I’m so thirsty, I feel like I’m going to die,” her brother said. “Why don’t you buy a beer or something?” Natsuko asked. “I can’t. I don’t have any money. I’d have to use the card.” There was no stopping him, once he got like this. He would climb into a taxi and set forth downtown. There was only one path open to her.

No matter how much you drink, it won’t be enough. Maybe she should have said something like that.

Whenever they went out on the town at night, her brother would become obsessed with making her look pretty. Natsuko’s dresser was filled with clothes that he had bought for her on his credit card. He would grab her by the hand and take her out to a department store, make her try on all kinds of clothes that he would pick out, and then buy them for her. After she got changed, he would sit her in front of a mirror, comb out her hair, and spray a luxury-brand perfume on her neck. Then he would say to her: Natsuko, you are a woman, you know. If you would just make yourself look nice, everyone would pamper you. You might even find someone to take care of you and treat you special. But you don’t even do that. All you have to do is brush your hair neatly, like this, just once a day, he said as if trying to console her.

The two of them went into a dense alleyway lined with drinking houses, and were soon accosted by five or six hustlers. Natsuko felt ill at ease from the countless neon lights, her head spinning. After negotiating the price, one of the hustlers took them to the third or fourth floor of a mixed-residence building. It was the kind of place that one sometimes hears about where, if a fire were to break out and the emergency exits were blocked, countless hostesses and their clients would end up dying.

The two of them entered the club. Inside, there were women dressed in clothes of all different colors. Red, pink, purple, gold. The colors of the flames of women’s fighting spirits. Dresses that showed off the secret intentions of men and women alike. When the two took a seat, the women came to sit next to them. But as soon as they began to be treated like customers, her brother’s attitude toward her underwent a sudden change. He snatched away her bag, pulled out the envelope that contained her salary for the last month from her part-time job, and stuffed the notes into his own Italian-made wallet. All at once, he became suddenly loquacious. Waiter! he yelled, about to come out with some complaint or another. He always did that, no matter the situation. It’s too noisy in here, he cried out in anger. Then, for some reason that she couldn’t understand, he began to rail abuse at her in front of the hostesses.

“This woman, right, she’s just so stupid. Like, really stupid. I’m not even kidding.”

The two hostesses laughed. Professionals in dealing with even the worst of clients, they smiled calmly without any sign of surprise. They had no doubt come across a great many men who would start to behave strangely after a couple of drinks.

“And this woman, right, she’s into other women. I’ll bet you she’s done it with one. You think she’d be willing to show her face here if she hadn’t? Huh? That’s what you’re all thinking, right?”

Natsuko said nothing to contradict him. She merely drank her water in silence. She was so used to this kind of treatment that she felt neither anger nor agitation, only languor and drowsiness.

She suppressed a yawn.

“Don’t! Don’t you dare fall asleep! The night’s only just started!” Her brother slapped her. She let him do as he pleased.

The hostesses feigned composure.

Well, I guess women don’t normally come here, one of them said to her brother with perfect timing.

“Right? That’s right, right? Why don’t you tell her what kind of place women normally go to?”

That would be a host club, of course. That psychic on the TV, she makes a fortune. She’s always going to host clubs, the hostess said, pointing to one of the overhead screens.

“Oh? That show there? So that’s what she does with all that dough, huh?”

With the conversation shifting to TV personalities, her brother’s interest finally turned to the hostesses. If not for that, there would have been no way of getting him to leave her alone.

When she got home, she fell asleep without even changing out of her clothes.

After two years, her brother eventually racked up an impossible debt on his credit card, and then went crying to their mother. “They won’t leave me alone! I’m losing my mind!” Faced with no other options, their mother had to let go of her apartment to settle his accounts.

With his debts taken care of, her brother began to refer to that time as his “age of madness.” He could give it some grand name, something like his “golden age”—he could call it whatever he liked, Natsuko thought, she didn’t care. She was just so tired. He would talk like a French poet looking back on his days of abusing absinthe. But he was just a small-town alcoholic, and an unemployed one at that, someone who could afford nothing but the cheapest liquor.

Natsuko, unable to stay there even a moment longer, turned her back on the dresses hanging in the darkness. As if to flee from those reeking costumes, already completely faded.

For that matter, back then her mother had been incessantly going on about the film. “I want it colored. But the 8 mm makes the movements look weird, don’t you think? I don’t like it at all. Why can’t it look more like it’s happening right before my eyes? I’d watch it with my brother and his wife, and with my sister and her husband—we’d all watch it together. We’d have a screening at the hotel and reminisce on it all over a full course meal.” Or she would start recounting its contents to her yet again. “I want to get the 8 mm film colored, that one from when we all stayed with your grandfather in the suite, the most expensive set of rooms in the hotel. Your grandmother was holding the camera. She introduced the huge living room first, then that huge bathtub, like something from overseas, and the toilet. Then there was a counter with a bunch of glasses all in a line, every single one of them completely spotless, and a mountain of fruit. And then it was us children, rushing up to that huge bed in the deepest room in the suite, right? We’d watch that film, watch ourselves jumping up and down on that huge bed, with my brother and sister, we’d all watch it, talking all about it.” Had she been reminiscing about those past events in the hope that she could experience them all once more?

Natsuko watched as the sea drew ever nearer. There was a notice on the window: Do not open. There was no doubt about it: in the early afternoon light of summer, the sea would be an incredibly deep and beautiful shade of blue. But now, the sky was cold, and nothing but black waves and white foam stood out in the late winter evening. That was it: the white foam looked just like the foam that dripped from her husband’s mouth whenever he had his attacks.

To Natsuko, Taichi’s attacks were something that she could happily call convulsions in the fabric of life itself. The first one came quite as if it was aiming for that very moment. After all, even if he did work, her family would deprive him of everything that he earned, so it would be better for him not to work at all, she had thought.

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