Two striking new books today, dear listener, from two authors far apart in many ways, yet linked by their observations of life in Japan. Pickled ginger and Kagemusha; plum blossom; a single brushstroke on mulberry paper. Oh, and Miyamoto Musashi with his Book of Five Rings. By some odd synchronicity – a word we learned from Dr Who many years ago – All Lights Will Forever After Be Dim (Orford Parish Books) by Joseph Pastula, and Hugh Ashton’s Tales of Old Japanese (J-views Publishing) turned up at roughly the same time. Both writers have lived in Japan, and both have drawn on those times to infuse their fiction. So let’s have a look at them…
TALES OF OLD JAPANESE
by Hugh Ashton
There he was again. Sitting on the Matsuokas’ garden wall by the roadside. Keiko had seen him hanging round the area for the past few weeks, but she still hadn’t told anyone about him. He looked old, maybe eighty or so, about twenty years older than Keiko, but still fit. He must have been a tall man once, she guessed, but now age had bent him and he stooped awkwardly. One arm always seemed to be hanging stiffly by his side – she’d once noticed him fishing a packet of cigarettes out of the pocket of his scruffy stained blazer, extracting a cigarette and lighting it, all one-handed.
‘Keiko’s House’
We’ll start with Hugh Ashton, who we know better as a writer of Sherlock Holmes stories. A British author, along-standing interest in Japan led him to emigrate to that country in 1988, but he has recently returned to the UK, and now lives in the cathedral city of Lichfield with his wife, Yoshiko.
His new book Tales of Old Japanese is a quite marvellous thing. It’s thoughtful, reflective and ultimately really quite moving. How you would categorise it is very difficult. It has haunting and haunted elements, without being a collection of ghost stories. You might say these are detailed, lyrical tales of people’s real lives – except for the fact that there are moments when you might easily be reading a subtle ghost tale. In short, you could read it if you love weird fiction, and you could read it if you hate weird fiction.
But let’s avoid that filing system nonsense. The book contains five short stories, each with its own central character and exploration of loss, change and age. If we told you that one story is about an old man who changes his barber, and another about an old woman who feels sad about a bird in a zoo, we would be doing the book so little justice that we would have to hit ourselves. The characters are beautifully drawn – they feel what we might feel, and their experiences speak to us. It’s probably also important to say that although these stories are about older people, their hopes and fears are those of us all – don’t expect cosy ‘elderly’ tales.
One of Ashton’s gifts is that in a few simple words we are set alongside the central characters, observers in the same room or on the same street – he avoids obfuscation and cleverness in favour of that emotional connection. We don’t want to spoil the stories through analysis here, but will note that ‘Mrs Sakamoto’s Grouse’ is an absolute delight, and that ‘Haircuts’ is a hugely sympathetic portrayal of ageing and love.
We strongly suggest reading this short book. And getting to the heart of what greydogtales is about, weird stuff, we would recommend it to those who want to write modern weird fiction. Not because that’s what Tales of Old Japanese is, as such, but because of Ashton’s style and ability to capture character – and change. And because you’ll enjoy it.
As a side-note, we interviewed the author with regard to his work on Holmes here:
http://greydogtales.com/blog/holmes-lichfield-literarian/
ALL LIGHTS WILL FOREVER AFTER BE DIM
by Joseph Pastula
I first saw him standing near the Kabukicho Ichiban Gai gate. A foreign man, maybe European, I thought, due to his blonde hair and piercing green eyes. He stood there staring slightly upward into the sea of lights and signs that lined the street, saying nothing. His clothes were ragged and dirty, and with his hair and beard unkempt, he looked like a backpacker who had been walking through a much wilder expanse of nature than could be found in the heart of Shinjuku. Nobody took much notice, and I wouldn’t have either, had I not noticed the sign he was holding.
“You’ll be seeing me soon,” it read in block English letters.
‘I’ll Soon be Seeing You On’
The new book by Joseph Pastula is a different kettle of wasabi, and yet aspects of what we have said above do apply. This longer collection of short stories is unashamedly modern weird fiction, yet the bulk of it is once more set in Japan.
Pastula is an American author, artist, and translator who used to live in the Tokyo metro area. His works of weird/horror fiction include Little Oren and the Noises, a picture book for the weirder kids among us, Old Gory, a flag based work of weird fiction, and ‘Three Moves of Doom’, a fiction delving into the world of pro wrestling. He is also the creator of web based comic Silkworms.
Here, he presents a range of fascinating short stories, with even shorter interlude pieces between each of the tales, which acquaint us with the dark and bewildering sides of life in today’s Japan. Where Ashton provides a range of emotional resolutions, Pastula leaves a trail of questions behind him – ones which intrigue and worry.
In All Lights, you will find such curiosities as the hunt for a new apartment; an ill-advised visit to a fuzoku (legally almost anything but vaginal sex) establishment, and a family visit to a temple shrine. A number of these stories provide no answers as to what just happened. And we are well aware that this can be an annoying aspect of the worst of weird fiction – attempts at effect without content, without purpose. Inexperienced writers make something ‘weird’ for the sake of it, lacking the ability to affect the reader through style, structure or genuinely new visions.
In the case of Pastula, no such accusation could stand. Each of the short glimpses he gives you is more than intriguing or unnerving enough to pass muster, and like a single morsel of makizushi*, stimulating in its own right. The added bonus of some culturally unusual (for most Westerners) situations adds an extra frisson to some of the tales, but in each case you sit back and think. ‘The One That I Want’, for example, delivers a sense of strangeness slightly beyond your grasp as it intrudes into the apartment hunt – and fascinates by the way in which the characters react to their experiences (it’s quite a humorous tale in its own odd way); ‘Face to Faces’ is inexplicable and yet very poignant – and so on. Oh, and some of the stories in the collection are simply disturbing. Which is also good. You get the idea.
The collection also contains an additional three stories not related to Japan, at the end of the book – ‘A Severance of Roots’, ‘An Office Manager at Orford Mills’, and ‘Orison for the Departed’. All three are well worth the time, with ‘An Office Manager at Orford Mills’ being a particularly delightful tale with a twist of humour. ‘Orison for the Departed’ on the other hand, is plain worrying.
Again, fully recommended.
*Mazikushi is either a small nori-wrapped portion of sushi, or a 15th century Japanese mechanical device for lubricating one’s spare katana during the rainy season. How should we know?
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