J’s Take on Botchan

We usually decide on what books we’re going to do months in advance of when we actually read and review them. As evidenced here. So by the time it was Botchan‘s month, the only thing I really knew about it was that it was a classic Japanese novel and that a new translation had come out a few years ago.

What I ended up reading was not at all what I expected. I think I have, and perhaps many people have, a vision of Japanese ‘classics’ as full of poetry, nature.. just sort of perfect, neat, tidy, calming things. Like the embodiment of haiku, in novel form. Or the embodiment of ikebana, or the tea ceremony, or.. any number of other Japanese art and cultural forms.

And no, this was rather more in the line of a somewhat crazy anime. So, yea, there’s flower arranging and origami, but there’s also anime like Kodocha (Kodomo no Omocha), which I guess I had forgotten about! Or I didn’t expect it in something ‘classic’, which in this case means a hundred years old. Which, as far as Japanese history and even Japanese literature goes, is not really all that old. For someone used to reading science fiction and fantasy though, anything older than 50 years is nearly nonexistent.

Botchan is the story of a guy who happens into a job as a math teacher at a boys’ middle school. He’s not a very morally upright kind of guy. You wouldn’t want to be friends with him. But you’re perfectly happy to hear him tell his story. And at first I thought that he was an unreliable narrator when it came to what other people think and feel, being a guy who certainly seems to have very little empathy. So I was ready to think the best of all of the people he encountered, and to feel a bit smug that I understood them better than he did. And ready to feel a little sorry for them that they had to interact with this guy. Except, that, actually, no, all these other people aren’t exactly morally upstanding either.

It reminded me of Goodbye, Mr. Chips or To Serve Them All My Days in its focus on being a new teacher and having to navigate the political sphere of the school faculty. Yet I was also reminded of Bertie Wooster. The way the narrator talked to us, is I think the reason. As if we were reasonable people who think the same way they do about things, and that we would have the same opinion we do of the people around them.

I did quite like it and I think it’s a very good thing I read it, because now I’ll have a different view of Japanese ‘literature’.

I can’t end this review without talking about the translation a little bit. At first I questioned the translation. Very early on there’s mention of a Yamashiro-ya, a pawn broker. And I know that -ya is the suffix for a store. So I thought there was some confusion of the name of the store versus the name of the person/family. Looking at the original convinced me that the text did say Yamashiro-ya.. though I still wonder, given the narrator’s proclivity to nickname people, if that wouldn’t have been better translated as, something like, Mr. Pawnbroker and Pawnbroker’s property. Or even Pawnshop’s property.

And then there was a word here or there that didn’t sound quite right to me. ‘Sissy’? Wuss would’ve been better. But then, do you translate it so it sounds modern, or do you translate it so it sounds a hundred years old? A little ways in, I gave up thinking too much about the translation. (Apart from the appearance of ‘na moshi’.) I just got into the story and went with it. — Though I did find some odd typos that should’ve been caught by a computer: ‘and and’ and ‘suddden’.

The translation I read was by J. Cohn. I did not read the introduction. I think I’ll do that now.

Okay, well, the introduction said some of what I said above, actually. Apparently it’s not a ‘typical’ Japanese novel, for whatever typical might be. And it stands out even to the Japanese as being unusual, and appealing because of it. But then Cohn starts talking about Freud and I’m like.. whaaaaa…

I had to read and discuss Freud in at least one comparative literature class too, and just.. dude, Freud was not all that great. Was a downright idiot when it came to women, and gay people, and.. tons of things. And what does he really have to do with literature anyway? :P

I was not intending to end the review with annoyance at Freud and literature professors. You know what? Skip the introduction completely. Seriously. Usually a good policy to adopt anyhow.

Let me gaze at the happy grasshopper on the geta on the cover of this book. It was a good choice to represent the book. Though until you’ve read it, it’s completely incomprehensible when it comes to guessing what’s inside.

Oh! Now I feel like I should end with a haiku…

happy grasshopper
sits on a wooden geta
for the camera

(now the grasshopper
wants me to tell minna-san
that it’s a locust)