I read this book for the Japanese Reading Challenge 17.
古道具 中野商店 川上 弘美, trans. Allison Markin Powell
The Nakano Thrift Shop – Hiromi Kawakami
This slice of life novel features ordinary Tokyoites looking for simple smooth relationships in the early 2000s. The setting is second-hand goods store, definitely not an antique store. This, the owner-operator Mr. Haruo Nakano takes pains to make clear when he hires twenty-something Hitomi, our narrator in a small world of people who are slightly outside the mainstream of society.
With his other employee young Takeo, Mr. Nakano scours western Tokyo and hauls away the unwanted stuff of the recently deceased and walking wounded of family breakups. For twenty-five years, ever since he bailed out of salary-man boredom and humiliation, Mr. Nakano has been selling closet clutter that was accumulated by members of a modern consumer society but now cast off for a token amount to avoid having to pay to have it hauled away as over-sized garbage.
The customers are all kinds of people, from university students in need of cheap furniture to financially pressed dads who need a kotatsu for the family to collectors of pop culture artifacts to connoisseurs looking for finds from the Taisho or early Showa eras. It shows how even Japan changes: when I lived there from 1986 to 1992, I caught the feeling of a mild aversion against second-hand stuff (not books, but especially clothes), but now thrifting seems a no-brainer in Japan.
Thankfully, Japan’s shockingly honest culture has not changed. Displaying the most attractive objects on a bench outside the thrift gives Mr. Nakano a kick after the shutter goes up just before noon. Mr. Nakano's elder sister Masayo draws customers into the shop, as if by charisma, during the hours she helps. She’s an artist of dolls, candid in the way fifty-something women often are, unmarried, having man trouble. With her brother Haruo she shares a gift of gab, producing cascades of words that the perplex the reserved Hitomi who contrasts Masayo with the taciturn Takeo. Mr. Nakano, Masayo, Hitomi, and Takeo sometimes have tempura soba delivered straight to the shop and they eat together.
The days in the shop follow one another lazily and always seem the same. Objects arrive in boxes and depart in little bags that Hitomi creates. Mr. Nakano regularly visits "the bank" but everyone knows that it is just an excuse to meet his lover pretty Sakiko, who run a high-class antique emporium. Mr. Nakano, despite or because of his inscrutable way with words, is a heartthrob with a past dotted with myriad relationships and three wives. Who would have thought seeing him now: a middle-aged dude with verbal tics, wearing a knitted hat with pom-poms that reminds Hitomi of the manga character Sho-chan.
The store is a lab of human behavior where characters meet and grow close, according to their preferences, choices and desires. With delicacy and grace and a quiet sense of comedy, Kawakami evokes those mysterious bonds that form among us, when we often don’t know where we are or what to do. Her novel resonates with little joys and hurts which come with the vagaries of fortune and our own incomprehensions.
Hitomi falls for Takeo. He’s been hurt and like Hitomi can’t seem to get over being afraid of people because he doesn’t trust them. For the author, people grow closer only little by little, in a frustrating protracted process of mutual misunderstanding, lack of communication, needless distress and trivial anger. A relationship is always in flux, take it for granted at your peril, it won’t stay the same, so be attentive. Time is passing, what is inevitable will occur, don’t be surprised at loss when it comes, even the memory of faces of those we thought we loved will fade. Remind yourself why other people are important to you, right now, because they may not - will not - always be around. As Masayo observes, people keel over.
The writing of this novel resembles life, not the spectacle of births, deaths, and marriages but more as a succession of small satisfactions, bizarre incidents, and fleeting disappointments. Many moments of sensations: the wind that moves a curtain, the ruffles in the fabric of clothing, walking home at night with a crescent moon, binging on a mayo-flavored fried squid snack…. Kawakami, like Austen, excels at distilling eternity down to everyday instants. Yessir, give me a novel that connects my nose to the Logos, with scents no more insistent than somebody smelling of soap or rain. No drama, neither the narrator nor the author are divas. Nothing happens, but an intimacy, a gentleness, a tenacity to live, to hurt and to live on.
Good work on that review! I was hoping to get to this one for this year, but didn't. I'll either get to it later this year or for next year.
ReplyDeleteSounds like my cup of tea! Adding it.
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