Okay, this week done.
It was a little easier to follow what happened this time. But it’s still much more disjointed than the 硝子の塔 book.
I have some minor comments broken down by chapter this week:
3
He doesn’t even have a fridge? And he smokes an unholy amount of cigarettes. Lives in a shitty apartment, apparently. And he always feels watched either by people or by 鉄塔. Wonder what kind of childhood he had…
4
Backstory chapter, but more for 石川 than for him. We still don’t know our protagonist’s name. 石川 seems like a real strange person. Lives for the thrill. Otherwise, he could have easily retired with that kind of money he made. I’m not sure if I want to know what kind of thing he got himself involved with to get his new identity…
お前とはまた会うことにした said to our protagonist by the unknown person seems rather ominous. What the hell did that even mean?
5
It really seems to be a bad area of Tokyo where he lives. Poor kid having to steal. I felt bad through the whole chapter for him?her?. And another person from the past introduced 佐江子. Without much context, either. What was their relationship?
The focus of the book is much more on the stealing/掏摸 side of things than I thought from the book’s summary alone. Let’s see when an overarching story arc will form…
It feels like there’s really not much meat to discuss, yet.
I’ve only read chapter 3 so far (with two book clubs on the go, I’m always a little behind with this one).
This chapter was definitely easier to follow, and continues the atmosphere of gritty urban noir (hence the music suggestion) . I did get confused towards the end of the chapter. What was with the guy in the raincoat who disappears and is replaced by the homeless guy? Obviously, our nameless narrator is having trouble with insomnia but in this chapter he seems to be stricken with indecisiveness (going into the station, then turning around, then having second thoughts as he starts to leave the station)
Yeah, I agree. We’re kinda being dribbled half pieces of information right now. This story reminds me a bit of reading a book about someone who sold drugs that erased memories and started sampling his own wares
You mean the other way around? The homeless guy is gone, but the raincoat man is standing there (at least that’s the order I remember). I don’t think it has any deeper meaning. It’s more to show our protagonist’s strange train of thought and what he pays attention to. And it’s also fitting very well to set the chapter’s overall mood.
立花 (たちばな), not his real name, who starts the story with a warning
The mentor 石川 (いしかわ) who now goes by 新美 (にいみ）after “dying” overseas.
The ominous 男 seen taking money from 石川’s safe
佐江子 (さえこ), the shoplifting woman reminds him of her
I’m finding this book to be much harder than 密やかな結晶. I think it’s 50% vocabulary, but the other big reason is, all, the, commas, chopping, up the sentences are making it harder to read instead of clearer. Is it all grammatically correct Japanese? Or is it just separating different streams of thought? Maybe this is this just what more difficult Japanese looks like and I’m not used to it.
Yeah this is a style of writing that just takes getting used to, and isn’t meant to be 100% logical, but it is valid Japanese.
Taking as an example the book I mentioned earlier that this reminded me of (memory erasing drug dealer starts sampling his own wares) you can see a similar disjointed but comprehensible style in English
behind curtain to avoid big pic disruption of discussion
I think the most interesting scene this week was the mysterious man who had the exchange with 石川。This will definitely come back to haunt the protagonist
The more disjointed writing style means I keep zooming through a sentence, getting to the end, and being like ‘wait, what?’ then having to reread it and pay attention to all the clauses Probably not a bad thing to be forced to pay attention a bit.
He probably has a small kitchen and a small bathroom outside of this room, would be my expectation at least. This seems to be a standard Japanese apartment layout:
And he smokes an unholy amount of cigarettes. Lives in a shitty apartment, apparently. And he always feels watched either by people or by 鉄塔. Wonder what kind of childhood he had…
