I have been keeping a record of the books I read on my break (along with very brief reviews) on my facebook page. Partly for friends, partly to record my photographs of the books and partly to jog my memory at a later date.
I cam across Uno Chiyo while doing research for my blog (surprisingly I come across a lot of Asian materials when doing the sari blog) and later found her books in a Singapore library. Chiyo's book, Confessions of Love, must be quite popular here because I have seen several copies in Singapore's libraries.
Uno Chiyo was amongst other things a novelist and kimono designer who met the artist Seiji Togo while researching a gas suicide scene for her book. He had just survived a suicide pact attempt and arrived in his best "post suicide pact chic" with a bandage on his neck, the result of a wrongly applied scalpel (both scalpel and gas appear in Confessions of Love). Chiyo promptly fell in love and moved in with the artist. And equally promptly penned a semi-fictional account of Seiji’s love affair and subsequent suicide pact with the pretty daughter of a high ranking naval official. That book is Confessions of Love. Apparently suicide pacts were quite the thing in 1930s Japan, given the restrictive marriage norms of Japanese families at the time.
The affair in the book is all interrupted stolen meetings and inaction until the failed suicide pact. In fact not much happens in the primary relationship in the book between Joji (the fictional Seiji) and Tsuyuko. Between all this the fictional Seiji tries to extricate himself from his wife, makes a second marriage in which he is cuckolded and has desultory affairs with a few modan gaaru (modern girls) along the way. Despite these desperate romantic situations, the book is surprisingly light in tone.
Chiyo’s prose is much praised as supple so it appears the translation doesn’t do her full justice. Neither was I fully convinced by the introductory section which finds the book a subtle indictment of Seiji's weak character, and by extension of the Japanese male. Despite this the book is a strangely compelling account of an intense but doomed love affair by a writer putting down a tale known to her in an objective manner.
Chiyo died at age 99 proving that "bad girls" go everywhere and live forever:)
Notes: Someone needs to do a literary trail of the train stations that feature in 1930s Japanese books. People are always meeting at railway stations in the books I read - Confessions of Love, Naomi, Quicksand....
Pic 2 was taken in Newcastle. We found the dead bird in the garden one morning. It was perfectly formed and a beautiful vivid red in colour. We buried it later in the day. And while I am normally not the kind to take photographs of dead things, I felt I had to record the bird's existence. Hence it's appearance alongside the Chiyo book.
