A VIEW BY THE SEA

by Shotaro Yasuoka ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1984

Part of Columbia's Modern Asian Literature series: five short stories and the title novella by one of the few postwar Japanese writers to reach English translation--and one of the first (says Van C. Gessel in an introduction) to ""describe the collapse of the traditional Japanese family unit."" Born in 1920, son of a veterinary military officer, Yasuoka has a gloomy background: troubles with the pre-war militaristic culture, illness, rocky times in academia, poverty and postwar despair. All these are reflected in the autobiographical (usually first-person) stories here, most of which date from his heyday in the 1950s. Two pieces are sketches of adolescent/post-adolescent turmoil and aimlessness--with ambivalent feelings about family (a fat, loving mother especially), bitter attitudes toward authority, and tortured relationships with friends who represent different cultural/philosophical choices. The angst is more abstract, even a bit Kafkaesque, in three other stories: in ""The Moth,"" the narrator literally has ""a bug in his ear""; in ""Gloomy Pleasures,"" an army veteran guiltily goes to collect his perhaps-undeserved disability pension; and ""Rain"" features a familiar drizzle-effect with misery and precipitation. Far more impressive, then, is the title piece, presumably the most deeply, fully autobiographical here: a son visits his dying mother in a mental institution--while flashbacks fill in the domestic misery and friction (mostly involving the father's failures) which probably contributed to her dreadful decline into premature senility. Yasuoka writes plainly and grimly in this relentlessly dour, ugly-detailed slice of family fiction. Elsewhere, the effects are more muzzy and derivative--though readers with an interest in Japanese culture just before and after WW II will find intriguing sidelights throughout.

Pub Date: May 1, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Columbia Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION