Singular Rebellion - Hardcover

Maruya, Saiichi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0233982027 ISBN 13: 9780233982021

Publisher: Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1988

Synopsis

We all know, or think we do, that Japan is a conformist society, millions of inscrutable faces all with the same ideas in their heads. Surely that Japanese businessman you met last week, for example, couldn't have had one rebellious thought inside him? Not very likely, of course, if you think about it, and if you want to know just how unlikely, this book will tell you.

Set in the rebellious year of 1969 when rioting students seemed poised to overthrow the whole setup, this novel is about the need all of us have, as individuals, to conform, and also to rebel; rebellion depending on conformity, and conformity demanding that rebellion be a solitary, singular affair. The narrator is a middle-aged employee of an electrical goods manufacturer, a job he has because, when a career civil servant at MITI, he'd refused a transfer to the Ministry of Defense. Those about him see this as a pacifist gesture, a rebellious act, but for him it was nothing as simple as that, for here we have a human being, not an ideological cardboard cutout, and his motives were, and still are, mixed. As the book opens, rebellion takes the form of marrying a young fashion model, a wild act for a former bureaucrat, yet even this seems to come about more by accident than choice, involving him in a more seriously rebellious world as his wife's grandmother turns out to be a murderess (she'd carved up her estranged husband with a razor, more or less by accident too), and the various confusions her coming to live with them gives rise to are the real comic center of the novel.

In society itself an even more singular rebellion is going on, shown in graphic detail in the famous assault on one of the large Tokyo stations. This is seen through the eyes of a young photographer who has his own gesture of rebellion to make, the rejection of a congratulatory speech at a marvelously chaotic prizegiving ceremony which is one of the comic highlights of the book.

The novel deals with serious political and social ideas, but there is no flourishing of slogans or easy images of despair, for comedy does not rub ideas in one's face. Here we have what life was like in Japan fifteen years ago, and it hasn't changed much since then. If you want to know how the Japanese business elite think and feel, and what a Japanese professor is like; if you want to understand the Japanese bureaucratic mind, and what goes on inside the head of a young Japanese woman, or even what goes on inside a Japanese women's prison--then read on. If you don't particularly want any of these things, but just something genuinely stimulating to read, then this is also it.

About this title

About the Author

Saiichi Maruya was born in 1925. He was a professor of English literature, specializing in the field of contemporary fiction (in particular, James Joyce), before becoming a full-time writer in the late 1960s. He has translated a wide range of fiction into Japanese, from Jerome's Three Men in a Boat to Greene's It's a Battlefield. Singular Rebellion, the first of Maruya's novels to be translated into English, was awarded one of the most important Japanese literary prizes, the Tanizaki Prize, on its first publication, and he has since won numerous other awards. One of his latest English publication is Rain in the Wind, a collection of stories.

The translator: Dennis Keene, an English poet who has lived and taught in Japan for many years, is known for his distinguished translations of Maruya's Rain in the Wind and Morio Kita's The House of Nire, among other works of Japanese fiction.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I had arranged to meet Yukari at six o'clock in a hotel lobby. I left my heavy suitcase with the company janitor, saying I'd come back to collect it later, and set off a little earlier than I needed to. I'd walked from the subway station and just reached a main intersection near the hotel, where I was waiting at the crossing for the lights to change, when I noticed Yukari was standing exactly opposite me on the other side of the road. She must have arrived a little early, I assumed, and was taking a stroll in the May twilight. The young woman in the white dress with purple polka dots still hadn't noticed me even though there was now practically no traffic passing, and she stood there idly in a rather affected way. To her right was an old foreign couple, and behind them a group of women dressed as if they were just returning from some wedding reception, each holding a gift wrapped in identical red and white and talking constantly to each other about something.

I kept expecting her to notice me, but although she was facing in my direction she still maintained her rather prim, distant expression. I finally lost my patience and raised my hand when I saw she was looking intently at me, and then immediately her face broke into a smile of incredible sweetness, like a flower opening. Straight away she stepped smoothly out toward me, still smiling, and I let out a great shout of warning. A light brown limousine swept by on the other side of the road but, once it had passed, there was Yukari back on the edge of the sidewalk and still smiling at me. The lights at last turned green and Yukari and I met in the middle of the crossing, where she separated from the old foreign couple and the women returning from their wedding since she went back with me to the side from which she'd come.

As we walked toward the hotel she said:

"Fancy shouting like that!" remonstrating as she stared at me with her great big eyes.

About this edition

• Publisher: Andre Deutsch Ltd
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0233982027
• ISBN 13: 9780233982021
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 412