Undeniably, there has been a recent surge in popularity of contemporary Japanese literature, a phenomenon driven by cultural exchanges, accessible themes, and a growing interest in Japanese pop culture in general. A global fascination with various aspects of Japanese culture has boosted the appeal of its contemporary literary works; bookshops, book sites, book groups, book forums seem to be flooded with light and easy novels about bookkeepers, young timid girls, lots of cats (of course), lots of coffee shops, second hand bookstores, family business, cooks etc…
To make a long story short, they offer the universe that readers wish to find, a Japan that is exactly what the western readers envision and dream, avoiding other more complex aspects of Japanese literature and culture, and more “difficult” or dark authors like Yukio Mishima or Osamu Dazai that hardly fit in our sweet “woke” world. However, I recently managed to dig out a real gem in the mix bag of kawaii-ness proposed by the book forums I sometimes scout for inspiration, a ’70 novel that is strikingly modern and human, hard and sweet at the same time.
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Revered Japanese novelist Yuko Tsushima, who only recently passed away, wrote “Territory of Light”, drawing from her own experience, as a series of 12 standalone short stories with a common set and protagonist, serialised in the Japanese literary magazine Gunzo, once a month from 1978 to 1979. In the end, they were collected into a novel. Like all her (not many, unfortunately) English-converted works, the translation of “Territory of Light” is curated by Geraldine Harcourt. This edition was published by Penguin Modern Classics in 2019.
The story follows a woman and her 2-going-3-year-old daughter starting a new life together in a rented flat, after a separation that will turn later into a divorce. The names of the woman and the child are never mentioned in the book, while the husband’s surname, Fujino, gains a bit of symbolic weight as it is also the surname of the owner of the office building where the two move in; the building itself is known as The Fujino Building. Striking a good deal, the woman rents a vacant space at the top floor of this 4-storey block that houses few small enterprises. It is her first step out of married life; the space is cosy – the bedroom is as big as a double bed – but it has windows on all sides, and it’s flooded with light, reflecting on the red floor of the kitchen/dining area. A rickety metal stair leads to a wide roof top, all for them. From the big windows of the apartment overlooking a three-way intersection, it is possible to catch a glimpse of a wood belonging to a traditional garden that the woman jokingly calls Bois de Boulogne.
The first year of their new life unravels there, in the quirky apartment full of everyday feelings, mundanities, daydreams and nightmares, tantrums and laughter, and slowly the excitement that comes from an unknown future wears off, leaving space to tiredness, nightmares, loneliness and thirst for love.
“I felt as though I had before me an invisible, rickety, misshapen mass that not only kept its precarious balance but was actually sending out roots and even tentative new shoots that only my eyes could see”.
The peculiarity (and beauty) of this book is that, due to the aforementioned monthly serialization of the chapters, there isn’t a traditional or dynamic unfolding of a narrative plot, but instead, the chapters are just snapshots of life, mundane occurrences such as a pipe bursting and flooding the rooftop, a complaint from a neighbor about the daughter throwing objects out of the window, losing the little girl in the park on a Sunday, an occasional boozy night out, a Christmas with a toilet incident, the umpteenth absence of Fujino at a mediation session for the divorce, and so on. From there, an outpour of feelings and reflections drags you inside the life of the protagonist, her tiredness, her despair, her joy, her desire. The reading gets uncomfortable at times, when her temper is put to test by the daughter’s interrupted nights and cries, when she leaves her asleep at home to go drinking with a new friend, or when a slap or abuses burst out of nowhere.
And yet, this is the most honest and authentic portrait of motherly exhaustion I’ve ever read. Alone and brave, of that bravery that only stems from bare necessity, the protagonist goes through this year on the fourth-floor apartment, in a 70’s Japan that mustn’t have been gentle on a divorcee woman with a little daughter.
Tsushima had her own share of familial turmoil. Daughter of the celebrated writer Osamu Dazai who committed suicide when she was one, raised by her single mother and a single mother herself, in “Territory of Light” she weaves an intimate dreamlike mood, framing this dazzling territory as if it were a kind of spiritual limbo.
