NEW RELEASE! Moving stories that tell of the absurd violence of war, and tenderly depict the animals and children caught in its vortex.
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The Cake Tree in the Ruins, by Akiyuki Nosaka (Transl. Ginny Tapley Takemori)
Pushkin Press (Nov. 13, 2018)
Reviewed by Suzanne Kamata
As an American reader, conditioned to expect happily-ever-after endings, or at least those in which justice is served, I found this to be an odd and disturbing book. From the titles of stories such as “The Whale That Fell in Love with a Submarine,” “The Mother That Turned into a Kite,” and “A Balloon in August,” one might expect whimsy or fantasy. While they do contain a bit of whimsy, these tales, rendered in highly readable English by translator Ginny Tapley Takemori, are not easily categorized.
Although the story about the whale, “a complete flop with the ladies,” and his quest for a mate starts out sweetly, we discover that the submarine he falls in love with is actually preparing for a suicide attack on the American fleet. In “The Mother That Turned into a Kite,” a woman tries to protect her son from flames caused by incendiary bombs by smearing him with her bodily fluids – first, sweat, then tears, and breastmilk. Finally, devoid of moisture, she becomes flat and floats away. “A Balloon in August” features a group of unnamed, undistinguished Japanese children who are tasked with making hot air balloons out of paper made from mulberry trees, and glue made from konnyaku paste. The balloons are then used to convey incendiary bombs to America.
Many of the stories feature animals, which might lead one to believe that these are lighthearted children’s tales. While Nosaka did write with children in mind, American parents accustomed to Disney finales would probably be surprised at how these stories turn out. Spoiler alert: almost every main character, child and animal alike, dies in the end.
Perhaps this should not come as a surprise. As Nosaka writes in “The Elephant and Its Keeper,” “Too many undernourished people and animals appear in these stories, I know, but it was wartime, after all.” Each story is dated August 15, 1945, the date on which Emperor Hirohito gave a radio address announcing the surrender of Japan to the Allied forces. As noted at the beginning of the book, since 1982, August 15 has also been known as “The day for mourning of war dead and praying for peace.” War is sad and tragic, Nosaka seems to be reminding us. There is no way to sugarcoat the reality of it, and it would be wrong to do so.
Nevertheless, there are moments of grace, however fleeting. A starving she-wolf thinks of eating a little girl, but after discovering that she has been abandoned by her mother, gives her a ride on her back instead. A zookeeper ignores orders to kill an elephant, and escapes with it into the hills. A solider on a beach hallucinates a happy trip under the sea.
In her book On the Bullet Train with Emily Bronte, scholar and author Judith Pascoe writes of a conversation with Japanese author Minae Mizumura in which the latter opines about “American editors’ intolerance for anything that might be strange or off-putting to readers.” According to Mizumura, when reading works in translation, “Japanese readers are aware of the oddity of what they are reading, but undeterred by this awareness.” Pascoe writes, “I thought about Japanese readers down-shifting as they confronted the first pages of foreign literary works, while American readers insisted on a smooth frictionless reading experience, unhappy with any grinding between gears.” Reading in translation is akin, then, to traveling to a foreign country. Both can be unsettling, even jarring, but ultimately broaden our horizons if we remain open to the experience.
While The Cake Tree in the Ruins might seem confounding at first, it is a haunting and unforgettable collection, worthwhile for readers of many ages.
Read an excerpt of Cake Tree in the Ruins here.
About the Reviewer: Suzanne Kamata is an American, but she has lived in Shikoku for over half of her life. Her books include The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press, 1997) the award-winning short story collection The Beautiful One Has Come (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2011) and novel Gadget Girl: The Art of Being Invisible (GemmaMedia, 2013), which was named a book of Outstanding Merit by Bank Street College. She is an associate professor of English at Naruto University of Education. For more info, visit http://www.suzannekamata.com.
About the Author: Akiyuki Nosaka (1930 – 2015) won the Naoki Prize in 1967 for his stories Grave of the Fireflies and American Hijiki (included in the Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories).