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pylduck.livejournal.comLast week, I read Oh! A Mystery of Mono No Aware (Chin Music Press, 2009) by Todd and Linda Shimoda.
I picked up the book at Common Good Books while I was there getting Trenka's Fugitive Visions (my review is forthcoming to supplement the earlier one in the community). I had never heard of Todd Shimoda though he has two earlier novels out--the Kiriyama Prize notable selection The Fourth Treasure (Nan Talese/Doubleday, 2002) and 365 Views of Mt. Fuji: Algorithms of the Floating World (Stone Bridge Press, 1998). Interestingly, all of his novels have been published by publishers with a particular interest in Asia or in foreign locations. Oh!, like his earlier novels, are set in Japanese and seek to elucidate Japanese sensibilities from an American/outsider perspective. (A Village Voice review of Shimoda's first two novels is available here: Sensei and Sensibility.) Also like his earlier novels, Oh! features cover art and illustrations by his wife Linda Shimoda, and there is something worth exploring about this kind of collaborative project. Oh! in particular has been published by a smaller press, Chin Music Press , devoted to the book arts--devoted to producing books that are objects in themselves rather than merely repositories of the words and ideas they evoke.
I enjoyed reading this book. As a mystery novel, its narrative pacing is fast, fueled in part by the episodic structure of short (4-6 page) chapters that seem like flashes or glimpses of the protagonist's life. There is something filmic about the narrative--and not just because film noir has such a powerful hold on our understanding of mystery narratives. The story is told in the first person, present tense, by Zack Hara, a Japanese American technical writer in Los Angeles who leaves his job to travel to Japan in search of his grandfather's past and his own sense of life and emotions. He feels unable to connect to life and people in a deeply emotional way and sees it as a lack.
During his time in Japan, he meets up with a psychology professor who introduces him to the concept of mono no aware, perhaps a peculiarly Japanese sensibility about that moment of intense feeling and connection to nature that is also shot through with a sense of loss. The iconic cherry blossoms are a paradigmatic example of mono no aware. The novel becomes Zack Hara's exploration of this sensibility through a series of little tasks the psychology professor gives him and a self-initiated project of figuring out the mystery of the professor's lost daughter. Intercalary chapters provide thoughtful discussions of mono no aware, tracing its historical emergence in scholarly thought on a national literary sensibility for Japan. Full page ink paintings on textured paper frame the narrative (and a one-page epilogue is in fact nestled in that last set of paintings). Line illustrations pepper the rest of the text. The accompanying blurb on the book notes that these illustrations help to give clues to the fate of Zack Hara.
There are certainly a number of angles to think through this novel for Asian American literary critical purposes. The heavy reliance on the book as object and the illustrations put it in a group with work by Mei-Mei Brussenbrugge, for example, the poet who has also produced books in conjunction with an artist (her husband?). The return narrative of Zack, the disaffected Japanese American, as the protagonist searches for a sense of meaning or rootedness resonates with other work. In particular, though Zack searches for his family's roots by tracking down his grandfather's village and trying to find out the real story of his emigration, there is a greater interest in finding an intimate space that resonates with his daily experiences, something he feels lacking in the United States. Finally, the mystery narrative also puts this novel in conversation with a number of other texts that employ conventions of the mystery in order to explore Asian America.
The Shimodas have a website with more information about their projects: ShimodaWorks. Todd Shimoda was also interviewed about Oh! by Wendy Nelson Tokunaga.
I picked up the book at Common Good Books while I was there getting Trenka's Fugitive Visions (my review is forthcoming to supplement the earlier one in the community). I had never heard of Todd Shimoda though he has two earlier novels out--the Kiriyama Prize notable selection The Fourth Treasure (Nan Talese/Doubleday, 2002) and 365 Views of Mt. Fuji: Algorithms of the Floating World (Stone Bridge Press, 1998). Interestingly, all of his novels have been published by publishers with a particular interest in Asia or in foreign locations. Oh!, like his earlier novels, are set in Japanese and seek to elucidate Japanese sensibilities from an American/outsider perspective. (A Village Voice review of Shimoda's first two novels is available here: Sensei and Sensibility.) Also like his earlier novels, Oh! features cover art and illustrations by his wife Linda Shimoda, and there is something worth exploring about this kind of collaborative project. Oh! in particular has been published by a smaller press, Chin Music Press , devoted to the book arts--devoted to producing books that are objects in themselves rather than merely repositories of the words and ideas they evoke.
I enjoyed reading this book. As a mystery novel, its narrative pacing is fast, fueled in part by the episodic structure of short (4-6 page) chapters that seem like flashes or glimpses of the protagonist's life. There is something filmic about the narrative--and not just because film noir has such a powerful hold on our understanding of mystery narratives. The story is told in the first person, present tense, by Zack Hara, a Japanese American technical writer in Los Angeles who leaves his job to travel to Japan in search of his grandfather's past and his own sense of life and emotions. He feels unable to connect to life and people in a deeply emotional way and sees it as a lack.
During his time in Japan, he meets up with a psychology professor who introduces him to the concept of mono no aware, perhaps a peculiarly Japanese sensibility about that moment of intense feeling and connection to nature that is also shot through with a sense of loss. The iconic cherry blossoms are a paradigmatic example of mono no aware. The novel becomes Zack Hara's exploration of this sensibility through a series of little tasks the psychology professor gives him and a self-initiated project of figuring out the mystery of the professor's lost daughter. Intercalary chapters provide thoughtful discussions of mono no aware, tracing its historical emergence in scholarly thought on a national literary sensibility for Japan. Full page ink paintings on textured paper frame the narrative (and a one-page epilogue is in fact nestled in that last set of paintings). Line illustrations pepper the rest of the text. The accompanying blurb on the book notes that these illustrations help to give clues to the fate of Zack Hara.
There are certainly a number of angles to think through this novel for Asian American literary critical purposes. The heavy reliance on the book as object and the illustrations put it in a group with work by Mei-Mei Brussenbrugge, for example, the poet who has also produced books in conjunction with an artist (her husband?). The return narrative of Zack, the disaffected Japanese American, as the protagonist searches for a sense of meaning or rootedness resonates with other work. In particular, though Zack searches for his family's roots by tracking down his grandfather's village and trying to find out the real story of his emigration, there is a greater interest in finding an intimate space that resonates with his daily experiences, something he feels lacking in the United States. Finally, the mystery narrative also puts this novel in conversation with a number of other texts that employ conventions of the mystery in order to explore Asian America.
The Shimodas have a website with more information about their projects: ShimodaWorks. Todd Shimoda was also interviewed about Oh! by Wendy Nelson Tokunaga.
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