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| The Cover of Confessions of Love |
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| The Cover of Confessions of Love |
This novel, situated at a time during the pre-WW2 years of Japan is a very interesting look at some of the most debased narcissism that the culture has to offer. Making no apologies for anything, feeling no sense of remorse, shame, apprehension, or embarrassment, the author, Chiyo Uno, models this novel’s protagonist after her own life of flitting from one romance to another, one family to another, one existence to another and seems to revel in the seeming "romance" of it all, yet still finds most of it uninteresting, boring, and something to just walk away from. Whether or not the author has anything insightful to comment on these state of affairs, or is exploring some existentialist experience through these episodes, or is actively searching for meaning amidst the vapid existence her protagonist endures, is completely unknown. This is a weird little book.
The main protagonist is an artist of some renown and simply drifts through the text. He loves one woman. Then he gets bored, or the weather changes, or something insignificant happens and he falls in love with someone else. He gets tired or he gets yelled at by someone strange, then he leaves. He finds someone else. He feels rage. Then he feels ennui. Then he has lunch. Then he feels rage. Then he struggles with his finances. Then he tries to kill himself. Dull. Dull. Dull.
This book describes many familiar Japanese-societal settings, the intense nature of societal obligation to others, the inter-woven-ness of family relations, the crushing sense of self-doubt and fear of ostracism and shame. If this text were some kind of story that really wrestled with these obstacles, that really got you inside the torment that the characters felt, we would have something interesting to look at. If the characters were explored in such a way that we could see the futility of their lives, the struggles, the disappointments, or even a keen insight into their blasé regard for these constraints, that would be fascinating. But this book just isn’t that well constructed or written. I suppose that for its time it was quite a rebellious text, but I think that this is simply incidental. What we have here is a classic case of someone mediocre simply having excellent timing, and thus being able to access a wider audience.
Frankly speaking, sometimes I feel that way about KTJW as a website. It was totally freakishly good luck that brought this site its fame (and yet to be seen fortune! LOL!).
Anyway, back to this book. If you are looking for something that explores the Japanese-psyche as it lives, copes, ignores, obfuscates, rages against, despairs under, or explores some significant themes you should read the novels of Murakami instead.
Confessions of Love is not much of a confession at all. It confesses or professes nothing. There is no thesis, no anti-thesis, no nothing. As someone who has read a fair bit of creative postmodernist writing, and actually enjoys quite a bit of the more creative subversive material in the genre, this book just doesn’t make the grade one way or another. This book, like the botched suicide attempts of the main protagonist and his lover using scalpels to stab their necks, just doesn’t seem to cut it.
Mark Groenewold
Kanazawa, Japan
September, 2005
This page is copyright © 2005 Mark Groenewold