The Changeling by Kenzaburō Ōe

The Changeling Reviews

• 
  BlackOxford

  Passing the Turing Test
  
  Kenzaburō Ōe reveals the frantic chaos below the swan-like public composure of Japanese society. In The Changeling, his target is the intense culture of the cosmopolitan Japanese intellectual - political, commercial, sometimes sordid and bizarre, and not infrequently violent. If the title means anything, it probably refers to Japan itself in its intellectual transformation since the mid-nineteenth century..
  
  The rambling fictional memoir uses the conceit of a conversation with the protagonist’s (Kogito = Cogito?) recently dead brother-in-law via a set of cassette tapes he had made over years of separation, possibly estrangement. While listening, Kogito simply pauses the tape and responds as if the man were speaking. Like Proust’s madeleine, the tapes provoke buried memories in Kogito, mostly about the duties of an artist and their unpleasant consequences.
  
  The somewhat self-conscious literary allusions range from Rimbaud to Maurice Sendak to the Gospel of Mark as Kogito’s reminiscences bounce from his home in the forests of Shikoku, to Berlin, Chicago and Brazil. Strange anecdotes, like the unaccountable arrival of a large turtle in the post and its gruesome slaughter, to the antics of a post-war right wing suicide cult, are strewn about randomly. Some of the references to contemporary events - like the assassination of JFK - are well-known, but many are specific to Japan and therefore probably unintelligible to non-Japanese.
  
  I get the impression that Ōe is conducting a sort of inverse Turing Test with himself. Instead of interrogating a machine to determine if it conforms to intuitive standards of human responsiveness, Kogito allows himself to be interrogated by the the machine in order to discover what he is. The poem ‘Adieu’ by Rimbaud is a running theme throughout. At one point the brother-in-law reflects on this poem, perhaps stating the point of the book: “Ha! I have to bury my imagination and my memories! What an end to a splendid career as an artist and storyteller! And later he adds, Well, I shall ask forgiveness for having lived on lies. And that’s that.”
• 
  Jim Fonseca

  A book without a lot of plot but a considerable number of themes, and I’ll even say deep and unusual themes. As is the case in every other book I have read by this author, the main character has a brain-damaged son (as does the author). In this case the son is a savant who is brilliant at musical composition.
  
  
  
  REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS
  
  The story focuses on the main character’s reaction to the suicide of his lifelong best friend, his brother-in-law. They were best buddies as kids and the main character married his best friend’s sister. Now both men are extremely successful and well known in Japan. The main character is an author and a public intellectual who is frequently interviewed on television. The brother-in-law is also well known as a documentary filmmaker, idolized not only in Japan but in Germany as well.
  
  So, suicide is a major theme as it is in some other Japanese novels I have read, and as we know, there is a tradition of ritual suicide by men in Japan including suicides by many famous authors. Suicide is a theme that illustrates why I like to read stories from other cultures. In one of the many Japanese novels I have read I recall one where the family is discussing suicide around the dinner table, with the children asking the parents ‘would you ever kill yourselves?’ Their answer isn’t a shocked ‘No, of course not, what are you talking about? Instead. it’s ‘Well… “ And in this novel, the main character has an acquaintance he occasionally has lunch with and the man says to him, in effect, ‘I like to keep an eye on you because I know you are the type of guy who might kill himself. So, how have you been?’
  
  Another theme I’ll call ‘the possibility of communicating with the dead.’ As adults, the man and his brother-in-law did not actually have much in-person interaction over the years. Instead they communicated by letter, phone calls and by occasionally mailing cassette tapes. Just before the brother-in-law died, he had recorded hours of tapes to send to his brother-in-law. The dead man reviewed their lives and how they had influenced each other.
  
  After the brother-in-law is dead, the main character becomes obsessed with listening to these tapes in the evening and recording his own responses to them as if he were still communicating with the dead man. He comes to believe that the topics that the brother-in-law recorded seem to relate to events in his current life as if he were receiving timely advice and commentary from beyond the grave.
  
  Another theme relates to the remnants of the post-war militaristic culture that remains in Japan. In a way, this is a contemporary concern because of what we know to be neo-Nazi white supremacist militia types in our own country. And it appears they are still active in Japan. (We are told the brother-in-law died in 1999, so that’s around the time most of the story is set.)
  
  In brief, the main character’s father had been a leader of a failed paramilitary action right at the end of WW II. These guys refused to accept Japan’s surrender and wanted restoration of the empire. Some of these guys who knew his father are still around, living in a type of rural commune. They expect these two local boys who have risen to fame to help them out. They harass and attempt to coerce them in bizarre ways.
  
  
  
  Another storyline - I guess I won’t call it a theme - concerns the main character’s wife, sister of his best friend. She had a dysfunctional mother who died young, and from an early age she was like a mother to her younger brother. Can a woman be so attached to the memory of this little boy that she had her own child as an attempt to replace that lost kid that she treated as a son? This is particularly true after her brother became the ‘changeling’ that the title refers to.
  
  There’s a lot of stuff about art. There are discussions of these two men talking about how much of Japan’s artistic endeavor is indigenous vs. copied from the west. We get into music with the son’s interests. There’s discussion about issues with translations and reading works in translation versus the original language. There’s a bit about the early history of the Japanese film industry.
  
  The main character’s wife is an artist and, in the last quarter of the book or so, the story focuses more on her reactions to her brother’s death, this idea of a changeling, and its connections to literature she has read including children’s stories and illustrations by Maurice Sendak about ‘changelings’ and ‘the stolen child.’
  
  After his best friend’s death the author takes a few months to go to Germany after being invited as a visiting scholar by a university. His best friend spent much time in Germany making documentaries and the main character takes this opportunity to look into his friend’s life in Germany, including some women he was involved with. His time in Germany becomes “a solitary marathon of reminiscence” about his brother-in-law. One of those young women in Germany, who is Japanese, returns to Japan and provides a twist to the ending of the story.
  
  Some deep stuff. A little slow in starting and a bit bogged down at first when the two boys discuss literature, but I stuck with it and I was glad I did.
  
  
  
  This is my fourth book by this author (b. 1935). Of the four books I still like The Silent Cry best. When the author won the Nobel Prize in 1994, the Nobel committee cited that novel in particular as one reason for the award.
  
  Top image: from Maurice Sendak’s book Where the Wild Things Are from townsendcenter.berkeley.edu
  Japanese surrender on the USS Missouri from britannica.com
  The author from telegraph.co.uk
  
• 
  David

  "Hey, what's up, Doc? I think I'm going to dream tonite ..."
  
  Do you remember Dr Jacoby in "Twin Peaks" listening to Laura's tapes in his weird Hawaiian room? Well, thanks to youtube, you don't have to:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qT1s8...
  
  That's fictional Kenzaburo Oe at the start of "The Changeling". Fortunately, despite the "Let's try and shift as much Oe as they do Haruki Murakami" inspired blurb, this book isn't about a ghost in a tape machine. "The Changeling" sits as a sort of sequel to "The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away" and a sort of companion to "The Silent Cry".
  
  So we're back in Ehime! I love being in Ehime with Kenzaburo Oe.
  
  We know that in real life Oe's father didn't launch a (is it really obvious to say this name? Does Oe hate it? Or is it inevitable?) Mishima-esque futile rightist coup. Instead, we know that this is what Oe imagined happening in his "The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away".
  
  And we know that in real life Oe's brother-in-law was a childhood friend who became a successful film director, and that one day he killed himself by jumping out of his office window.
  
  "The Changeling" brings these two strands together. The pivotal moment is known only at THAT; an experience Oe and his brother-in-law's fictional selves shared in the Ehime countryside in the early 1950s.
  
  Sounds great, doesn't it?
  
  But at the start, when we were learning about the fictional brother-in-law's life and relationship with fictional Oe, I found it all a bit frustrating. Western readers who don't read Japanese newspapers will find it difficult to know how much of the first third of the story is fact and how much is fiction. For example, we hear that fictional Oe was upset to hear what a famous comedian-turned-film-director, who won an Italian film award, had to say about fictional brother-in-law's suicide. That's Kitano "Beat" Takeshi, isn't it? Or am I saying that because he's the only Japanese comedian-turned-film-director I know? And did this really happen?
  
  Then, fictional Oe talks about his book "Rugby Match 1860". Oe's "The Silent Cry" is titled "Man'en Gannen no Futtoboru" and in English this would be "Football in the First Year of Man'en" (the first year of the Man'en period was 1860). In my goodreads review of "The Silent Cry" I touched on my confusion as to whether the "football" in the book was soccer or American football. And fictional Oe's now talking about rugby?! Grrr!
  
  It got worse. In an effort to know more facts about Oe's real life I read his biography on the Nobel prize website, where they use different translations for the titles of some of his works. "Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids", which I know is sometimes "Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring" became "Bud-Nipping, Lamb Shooting"! I went back to "The Changeling" and fictional Oe was talking about "His Majesty Himself Will Wipe Away My Tears" (for "The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away"). Oh God I'm losing control of what I know about Kenzaburo Oe. And please let it not be the translation....
  
  But once we got back to Matsuyama and Oe's mad home in the Ehime forests, everything seems to fall into place.
  
  I know it's very fashionable to bitch about translations. Some of this was odd, though. Did Americans in the 1950s use the word "wanker"? And a Japanese woman uses the phrase "bringing coals to Newcastle"? Weird.
  
  
  Cool stuff:
  "It's a little bit like what Akari said to his grandmother in Shikoku, during her final illness: 'Please cheer up and die!'"
  
  Fictional brother-in-law gives us a portrait of a man who intends to lead young men in a futile rightist coup. The plan, it seems, is for everyone to die nobly and rather vaguely, "for the Emperor":
  "The Leader is a bitter-faced man with a stubborn look around his mouth and eyes. ... But it is hard to tell whether the Leader is really serious about pursuing those goals or whether he's just joking around. Isn't it possible that from the beginning he never really intended to carry out his radical, far-fetched plan? Nonetheless, he's the kind of guy who, when confronted with an unscalable wall, shouts, "Charge!" and runs into it head-on, with his foolish, faithful disciples close behind."
  
  Oe's still the frankest guy around. His teenage testicles (well ... fictional Oe's teenage testicles): "reminded her of a baby's tightly clenched fist."
  
  "(He) assured me that one of these days I would suddenly become so startlingly beautiful that people who had known me before would laugh out loud in disbelief."
  
  "'Even if you die, I'll give birth to you again, so don't worry.'
  'But wouldn't that child be different from the me who died?'
  My mother shook her head.
  'No, it would be the same.'"
• 
  Ms.pegasus

  Nobel prize-winner Oe Kenzaburo has written a memoir of the soul using the tools of fiction. THE CHANGELING thus falls, paradoxically, into both and neither category. It reveals the author as a relentlessly intense person looking back on his life and asking questions about life's meaning, death, the malleability of memory, and how our perceptions of history might govern the future.
  
  The author reveals his thoughts not through an interior monlogue but through an ingenious literary device. His friend and brother-in-law, Goro, is an accomplished film director. Goro abruptly commits suicide but before doing so, has sent the protagonist, Kogito, a trunk of cassettes. The tapes provoke an imaginary dialogue between Kogito and Goro, while allowing the reader to view Kogito through another person's lens. Various conversations segue into meditations on aesthetics, Kogito's childhood, the semi-autobiographical aspects of Kogito's novels, and two defining incidents in Kogito's life. The conversations also reveal something of Goro, with the question of why he might have committed suicide always hanging in the air. Both factual and existential hypotheses are offered.
  
  The author offers up some playful gambits to the reader in a style totally devoid of humor. At one point the voice of Goro questions the value of viewing a film or reading a book repeatedly, as an object of study. Yet, this book is so subtlely complex, that at least a second reading is necessary to keep track of all its threads. At another point, Goro remarks on Kogito's habit of self-reference in all of his writing. The fact is that Kenzaburo is writing about his own life and works in this novel: His brother-in-law was the filmmaker Juzo Itami. His son Hitari is actually brain damaged and a musical genius, just as the novel depicts. Kenzaburo was born on the island of Shikoku and studied French literature at Tokyo University.
  
  Incidents in the book are viewed repeatedly from different perspectives. The death of Kogito's father is recounted first as a simple statement of fact. It is repeated in increasing detail through the comments of Kogito's mother, through the memories of Kogito who was then 10 years old, through the mythologizing declamations of Daio, and finally in several historical frameworks by the adult Kogito, in the context of a Meiji peasant rebellion in 1860 and the radical neo-fascist politics of post-war Japan (although not mentioned, the Western reader cannot help but think about this movement personified by Yuko Mishima).
  
  Another repetitive element is Goro's floating “man picture.” The image returns as Kogito's wife, an illustrator, explores a book by Maurice Sendak, Outside Over There.
  
  The narrative circles, approaches and recedes several times from an incident that occurred to Kogito and Goro when Kogito was 17. The incident, referred to as THAT is revealed gradually like a repressed memory. This was a thought-provoking book. Parts of it were both disturbing and creepy (for example, the chapter “Trial by Turtle”). I'm glad that I read it but can't say it was enjoyable.
• 
  Connor

  What a fascinating, tricky novel. The recorded tapes a a narrative device was an ingenious way to have an almost epistolary novel, framed by memory. Subtle, yet with a vivid emotional power that I've been thinking about constantly since I finished it.
• 
  Roger Brunyate

  A Life in Fractals
  
  Fractal designs, such as used to be popular twenty years ago, have the property that any part of them replicates the whole in miniature. If you zoom in on even the tiniest detail, you can reach an understanding of the entire shape. This analogy occurs to me after reading The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe, a late work by the Japanese Nobel Laureate, and so far the only thing by him that I have read. Where most novels have a linear narrative behind them, this one reads as a series of one-sided conversations, thoughts about literature and other arts, buried memories, and some bizarre incidents—all generally minor in themselves, but each seemingly endowed with immense hidden significance, each a clue to some overall design that only gradually emerges as the various details replicate and mirror one another.
  
  Despite its abstract content, the book is easy to read and its framework simple. Kogito Choko, a celebrated writer, is listening to some tapes sent him by his brother-in-law Goro Hanawa, once his childhood friend and now a famous film director. At the end of one of the cassettes, Goro remarks "So anyway, that's it for today—I'm going to head over to the Other Side now. But don't worry, I'm not going to stop communicating with you." Immediately after, Goro throws himself out of the window of his high building. Kogito (an obsessive thinker, aptly named by his father from the phrase "cogito ergo sum") engages in months of conversation with the dead Goro, playing snatches of the tapes, stopping them for his own response, and then continuing to hear his friend's answer. When his wife suggests he needs to get away, he accepts a guest professorship in Berlin, where Goro had himself lived a few years back.
  
  As an example of Oe's method, take the chapter in which Kogito is being interviewed on television in connection with the Berlin Film Festival. There is a long section about how he gets to the interview, or almost doesn't get to it: crossed wires with the person picking him up, confusion at the hotel where this is taking place, description of the technicians setting up the equipment in the hotel ballroom, the physical arrangement of the chairs, backdrop, camera, monitors, all in obsessive detail. And then, without further preamble, Kogito is shown a number of film clips on the monitor: samurai fighting off a peasant army, and a modern game of rugby football. He recognizes it as scenes from a book he had written, entitled Rugby Match 1860. In the novel, he had used the battle and the game as metaphors, but he intrigued by the decision of these filmmakers to film them literally, with an acute feeling for the Japanese atmosphere. He is told that what he has just seen is the only footage from the project so far shot, but the young filmmakers have run out of money; would he be willing to concede them the rights for free? Kogito's translator warns him that he is being ambushed, but he agrees, and the chapter ends.
  
  The core of this chapter, I believe, lies in one of its smallest details, the samurai film clip. Certain aspects of it reflect other images we encounter involving Kogito's father, who appears to have been something of a philosophical leader of an ultra-right-wing movement opposing the Japanese surrender to the US. Kogito's own politics, on the other hand, are liberal, so perhaps he is the Changeling of the title? (Or one of them, along with Goro.) One begins to see that the whole novel is about change. In the background, there is the reconstruction of Japanese society after defeat. But this is worked out in terms of ideas—translation between languages, translation of one medium into another (writing into film or opera), and perhaps (as the example above would suggest) the handing over of ideas from one generation to another.
  
  The fractal metaphor works on the personal level as well. From what I can gather, this novel reflects themes from every other book that Oe has written, and these in turn reflect the author's life. His brother-in-law was indeed a famous film director, Juzo Itami, who committed suicide in a similar way. Like the fictional Kogito, Kenzaburo Oe has a son who was born brain-damaged, barely able to communicate in words, but who eventually found success as a composer. All Oe's later novels contain such a character, and the writer has spoken of his aim to give his son a voice denied to him in life. While the composer-son plays a relatively small role here, Oe shifts the relationship back a generation, as Kogito tries to understand the legacy of his own father and the huge changes between the Japan of his time and that of the present. The themes of rebirth and the passing of the torch between generations become clear only at the very end, but after so much mind-play they bring a lovely touch of simple human emotion.
  
  p.s. Many of the same themes will recur once more in Oe's latest novel,
  Death by Water.
• 
  Stephen Durrant

  As one of my previous reviews indicates, I admire the Japanese Nobel Prize winning author Kenzaburo Oe. He demonstrates more than any Japanese writer I know the degree to which so many modern Japanese intellectuals have assimilated the larger cultural and literary world outside Japan. Arthur Rimbaud, Maurice Sendak, Wole Soyinka and other cultural icons are not just names he drops but figures who shape the content and meaning of "Changeling," Oe's most recent novel. His intellectual landscape is rich and varied and stands in sharp contrast, for example, to the rather restricted cultural world one typically encounters in literature from across the waters in China. Still, I am beginning to feel that although Oe's cultural horizon is exceedingly broad, his stories are becoming too repetitious and trapped in the lineaments of his own past. It is as if the same basic story elements are recycled endlessly: the bookish somewhat alienated writer, the mentally retarded son who is also a musical genius, the understanding but rather lonely wife, the complicated political history that contains a youthful and dangerous flirtation with right-wing fanaticism, etc. But there is always a new and surprising twist in Oe's novels. In this case it is the voice of Goro who has given his friend Kogito, the major narrator of the novel, a series of audio tapes that lead up to and end with Goro's suicide. Why has his talented friend decided to leap to his death? Can some clue be found in the long ramblings Kogito listens to on tape night after night? Moreover, what can Kogito learn of their common past, and their onetime involvement with right-wing fanatics in an event described in the novel simply as "that"? As a tribute to human complexity and the difficulty of ever peeling away the last layer of the onion of another personality, one is hard-pressed to do better than Oe. Nevertheless, I begin to tire of the narrative elements he lays down in his earliest works and continues to rewrite up to the present time.
• 
  Suzy

  Reading this seems like an accomplishment to me. Oe is a Nobel Prize-winning author, so I am glad to have read something by him. His writing is extremely intelligent and intellectual; you can't help but be impressed. It wasn't until the Epilogue that I can say I really enjoyed reading the book though. The epilogue was long--more like a few more chapters (and the end of it felt much more like The End than the end had). It interests me that it SEEMS like I liked the epilogue bc it was written from the POV of the protagonist's wife, whom we hadn't heard from much up until then. But, of course, this more feminine "take" on things was written by Oe too--for that feat alone he deserves kudos. Chikara's epilogue brings meaning to the story and is curiously intertwined with Maurice Sendak's books. It is where the theme of the Changeling is really brought to light, and I, being of a philosophical bent, really liked the ideas here.
  
  As for the rest of the book, it is told in so many twists and turns, hopping from one time frame to another that it was hard for me to piece it together, so it felt sort of like reading scraps.
  
  Thanks, Nick. I think you would like this!
• 
  Alicebv

  Un libro con una sua complessità..affronta tematiche importanti: la vita, la morte, l’anima, la fragilità umana, la perfezione e l’imperfezione, e soprattutto l’amicizia. Un’amicizia forte quella tra Goro e Kogito, un’amicizia che vuole andare oltre i confini della morte, e il Tagame è il mezzo per farlo..
  Non si può dire che questo libro mi abbia lasciata indifferente, ma mi ha scatenato reazioni contrastanti: l’ho trovato a tratti coinvolgente, interessante, noioso, irritante..e nel complesso mi ha lasciato la sensazione che mi sia sfuggito qualcosa.. ..mi è piaciuto il modo in cui tutta la storia si dipana e piano piano i dettagli emergono..ho trovato interessanti le riflessioni sul “vacillare” e i punti in cui la dimensione onirica e quella reale si confondono, ma tutto questo Goro-centrismo e questo riconoscimento incondizionato della sua superiorità da parte delle persone a lui più vicine, soprattutto nella parte finale l’ho trovato davvero fastidioso..
  
• 
  FFF

  9 de junio / Páginas 1-80
  Kenzaburo Oe fue mi escritor fetiche, mi tótem, mi sensei, entre los 21 y los 24 años. En esa época le leí todo lo que estaba publicado en español. La primera palabra que me venía a la cabeza para describir su escritura era "salvaje". Pero también podía ser "criminal". Y sus historias eran una pesadilla. O un infierno. Casi todo lo traducido procedía de su primera etapa (fines de los 50-fines de los 60); todo había sido escrito antes de que Oe llegara a los cuarenta. Siempre me pregunté por qué, si después había publicado tantos libros, y había ganado el Nobel en 1994, la inmensa mayoría de su producción del 70 en adelante no estaba disponible en nuestra lengua. Sentía que quizá me estaba perdiendo lo mejor y eso me frustraba. Pero tal vez me equivoqué. En esta novela post-Nobel, escrito a medio camino entre los 60 y los 70, Oe demuestra, al menos en las primeras ochenta páginas, haber perdido el filo retorcido de su juventud. Sabe contar, por supuesto, pero eso lo saben muchos. Y Oe era un verdadero salvaje, no un simple buen escritor. Quizá el libro mejore. No estoy seguro de que yo vaya a seguir leyendo lo suficiente como para comprobarlo.
  
  12 de junio / Páginas 81-181
  La novela alza vuelo: después de cuarenta páginas lamentables, que podrían hacer desistir a cualquiera, o al menos casi lo consiguen conmigo, cuarenta páginas bastante inútiles centradas en los cien días que el protagonista pasa en Berlin, el libro se centra en el tema que lo salva (y, por tramos, lo eleva muy arriba): el peligro de producir arte cuando este se opone a múltiples poderes criminales. Atentados, amenazas, miedo permanente, posibilidad de autocensura. El protagonista (escritor) comparte con su recientemente suicida cuñado (director de cine), una vieja amistad que incluye sucesos oscuros, todavía no revelados, pero también la persecución de la yakuza como amenaza permanente. Y varios ataques directos. No verbales sino materiales: balas y cuchillazos. Cuando se enfoca en el cruce entre la historia y el arte (o, mejor, cómo ciertos eventos históricos limitan la posibilidad de la creación, y desencadenan censura, persecución, estigmas) la novela de Oe parece insinuarse como obra mayor. Pero todavía no alcanza a consolidar esa posición: quizá porque el relato contiene muchos elementos autobiográficos, está contaminado por subtramas irrelevantes para la historia principal y digresiones que distorsionan el punto de mira. Con todo, pasada la mitad de la novela, y a pesar de que se mantiene ausente el viejo fuego que animaba los libros del primer Oe, ese espíritu salvaje de su veinte y sus treinta, sería injusto negar la calidad de este libro. Veremos cómo continúa.
  
  13 de junio / Páginas 182-237
  Lo mejor de la novela. Lejos. ¿Por qué Oe tardó tanto en llegar hasta aquí? ¿Por qué las primeras 180 páginas no fueron reducidas a 100? Hay una escena aparentemente banal, pero que me ha parecido extraordinaria (por la dureza de la descripción y la poderosa carga simbólica): los largos y fallidos intentos del narrador por matar, en la cocina de su casa, a una rana de gran tamaño que ha recibido como regalo especial por alguien que conoce de sus aficiones culinarias. La lucha es salvaje, y en ella se juega la vida del animal, pero también algo oscuro de similar importancia para el narrador. Ni en los mejores momentos de El viejo y el mar recuerdo haber encontrado algo parecido.
• 
  Ernest Junius

  To be frank, this is not an easy book. I did struggle when I read this. The scenario was loosely going back and forth, including a long solitary march of self-reminiscing of the past. It is very easy to get lost in time and space with that kind of literary narrative. Of course with Oe's skillful direction, I somehow managed to stay in course and keep on reading until the very end. But, to me, there were some problems...
  
  The book starts strong and interesting: a friend of the aging main character in the book, a rich and famous movie director, went on a suicide by throwing himself from the roof. However, he did not stop communicating with the mentioned main character, by talking monologue through the tapes that he sent him. And then from there, starts the reminiscing about the past, starts a struggle of how the main characters in the book (which all of them are close friends or close families of the deceased) undergo an ordeal of media rampage and blackmails. There are surely a lot of problems illustrated in the early chapters of the book.
  
  However as I trudged along, I found little or no enlightenment about the mystery surrounding the story, the way-outs and pay-offs. All I could see were more and more strings of story tangled together in a piece ball of mess that is very hard to unravel. And even though, after I went through the mess (including sex, mild pedophilia, homosexual affairs, strange illusions), what I got in the end was far less than what I would expect as an 'explanation' or a 'wrapping chapter'. It seemed to me that Oe just left it all behind in chaos and called it an art.
  
  Oe did sprinkle great insights here and there—one of the reason that I concluded the book more as educational than being a novel, embellishing the rather pale, livid story with weak glow. Although I learned something from the book, mostly quotes from other literature patriots, such as Maurice Sendak and Arthur Rimbaud, I still don't understand completely of what I have actually learned from what Oe's had written—not the piece that he had borrowed from the authors mentioned.
  
  But there was one major problem I couldn't handle very well. Which is how Oe wrote (or maybe it was Boehm—the translator, I would never know) in such an old and over-explaining manner, makes the words rather diluted, thus lack of that strength that could keep one's eyes stay in their track, to read page after page. I felt the words were dull—the kind of feeling like walking on a deserted mexican town under the heat with nothing much to see except the sound of the dry wind and creaking worn-out bar door.
  
  So now I have finished the book and I feel empty. Nothing that I read just now was life-changing. I felt somehow a little bit disappointed, after those 450-ish pages that felt like eons-long. Being the first Oe's book I have ever read, I don't give up hope. I still have an unread copy of 'Somersault" in my shelf that I will read and try to find out the beauty (of Oe's writing—if there is any) from there... though not in near future.
• 
  Krishna Avendaño

  Renacimiento no es una novela para el gran público, es una novela para los lectores de Kenzaburo Oe. El autor, como sucede en muchos otros de sus libros, se vale de la autificción para hablar de otros temas —en este caso la creación artística y los peligros que hay detrás de ella—. No sabemos qué tanto es cierto o no. El libro que creímos que era una autobiografía fiel (Cartas a los años de la nostalgia, que también aparece aquí) resultó ser una novela. Oé quizá está jugando con nosotros y decidió crear en su literatura un mundo completamente verosímil que es demasiado parecido al real. Esta genialidad (¿deberíamos llamarla autometaficción? Que Borges baje del cielo y nos explique, porque los pedestres ya no entendemos nada) le ha permitido entablar un diálogo con su propia literatura y con el Japón de la posguerra.
  
  En este caso tenemos a Kogito, que es el mismo Oé, Goro es Juzo Itami, un director de cine que se suicida en condiciones raras y que además era el cuñado de Oé. Goro ha dejado una serie de grabaciones con las que Kogito se obsesiona. A través de la conversación entre el vivo y el muerto, el autor recuerda los años de juventud y cómo eso incidió en su propia literatura, que es también la de Oé. Así se ven referencias a El grito silencioso, a dos novelas que jamás se tradujeron y no se volvieron a editar y que le acarrearon al autor amenazas de muerte —ver el caso del ultranacionalista Yamaguchi Otoya—, y sobre todo a El día en que él se digne a enjugar mis lágrimas (novela corta que en español aparece en el volumen "Dinos cómo sobrevivir a nuestra locura"), uno de sus mejores textos y que funciona como burla al trauma nacional después de que el emperador se rindiera y se declarara como humano.
  
  Me temo que sin el conocimiento previo de la vida de Oé y la mayoría de esos libros, la lectura de Rancimiento puede ser tediosa. Para quienes hemos seguido a este autor, sin duda el más grande de Japón desde Soseki, esta novela enriquece en muchos niveles la experiencia de su literatura.
• 
  Utsav

  A slow, reflective, and often meandering but consistently beautiful read. A lot of the plot elements are apparently autobiographical, and Oe mixes fact with fiction to deliver a wistful tale of a man in his sixties looking back at his life in the wake of his best friend's suicide, replete with his musings on art, politics, individualism, and sexuality.
  
  A highly intertextual book, Oe takes us through, among others and off the top of my head, the works of Arthur Rimbaud, Frida Kahlo, Mozart, and even Maurice Sendak to make his point. He then goes further and assigns authorship of his own past works to Kogito, the protagonist, and references them frequently. The result is an honest, emotionally complex, very resonant work infused with a heavy dose of that sublime sadness the Japanese seem to be so good at conveying.
  
  I could find a point or two to quibble about regarding the translation, but while the awkward bits were noticeable, they did not detract from my enjoyment of the book, so I'll let them pass.
  
  And I have to mention that the hardcover design is simply gorgeous, with all the yellowed leaves on the translucent dust jacket that line up perfectly over the barren trees on the cardboard inside. That's definitely the edition to buy if you intend to keep it.
• 
  ktulu81

  -avviso spoiler-
  Parte molto bene con l’idea del dialogo “in differita” tra il protagonista e l’amico suicida: un oggetto comune come un registratore diventa inaspettatamente una sorta di “medium” tra il mondo dei vivi e quello dei morti.
  Andando avanti, però, la trama diventa a mio avviso sempre meno convincente. Ho trovato troppo forzato il tentativo di creare una tensione ed un alone di mistero attorno agli eventi del fine settimana a Matsuyama: secondo me l’autore crea aspettative eccessive rispetto a quanto realmente accaduto, che non mi pare possa giustificare la catena di eventi successivi.
  L’epilogo è secondo me la parte peggiore: la moglie del protagonista, che fino al capitolo precedente era una figura sullo sfondo, passa inspiegabilmente in primo piano e tenta di dare un senso conclusivo all’intera storia, secondo me con risultati discutibili.
  Mi spiace dare un giudizio del genere, perché le prime pagine mi erano piaciute davvero.
• 
  Jerry Pogan

  Kenzaburo Oe is one of the most fascinating writers I've read. Many of his books have, as a main character, a thinly disguised version of himself. He is never kind in his portrayal of himself, often, bringing out what he sees as flaws in his character. This book is about a fictional account (I'm assuming) of his relationship between himself and his brother-in-law who committed suicide and is totally engrossing.
• 
  Simona Fedele

  Non vedevo l'ora di finire questo romanzo! Probabilmente avrei fatto meglio ad abbandonarlo dopo 30 pagine e la mia cocciutaggine a volerlo portare a termine non è servita a nulla.
  Non mi è piaciuto per niente. Senza dubbio non sono stata in grado di capirlo ma l'ho trovato troppo intimista (ho letto che è un romanzo autobiografico) e a volte surreale, al punto che non sono riuscita ad entrare in sintonia con le vicende.
  Prima di tutto però l'ho trovato logorroico: nelle prime 200 pagine non succede nulla a parte l'evento tragico del suicidio di Goro. Il resto è fatto di dettagli inutili, noiosissimi e talvolta ripetitivi. Solo dopo 200 pagine circa si comincia a citare "quella cosa lì" riferendosi ad un evento oscuro successo nel passato dei due amici protagonisti. E solo quasi a 300 l'autore si decide a raccontare cosa sia successo ai due giovani. Il concetto poi di "bambino scambiato" viene alla luce solo a partire dalla pagina 357.
  Caro Kenzaburo Oe mi spiace ma il nostro rapporto finisce qui.
• 
  Christian

  DNF. I didn't get very far, but it reads like a biography. We're apparently more or less expected to know about Oe's life (his child, his friends) or at least to care about it. The only element of interest would be the protagonist's relationship to his lost friend, but the writing style and the contents are so overly intellectual, it's a real bore.
• 
  Hugh Dufour

  What a strange book. I don't know if I like it. Yeah, I like it. Oe has this effect on me: all my insides seem to move. There's nothing pedestrian here. Just make it to the epilogue, and it will change you.
• 
  Mike

  
  Picked this up because: I read
  A Personal Matter and
  Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids years ago. I don't remember much, but I remember I liked them.
  
  Synopsis: Elderly author Kogito has been receiving taped monologues from his lifelong friend Goro. When Goro commits suicide, Kogito becomes obsessed with having “conversations” with these taped monologues. As the book progresses, it seems that a shared traumatic experience between the two men may have sown the seeds for Goro's depression.
  
  This book is concerned primarily with memory, and, as such, is unreliable in its "facts" and gives few definitive answers about anything.
  
  Sometimes this lack of answers re: Goro's mindset, Kogito's part in things, etc. is dreamlike and kind of neat, but i can get tiresome. A few times I got frustrated for lack of a straight answer.
  
  Despite not always knowing quite what the story was(just some things that happened that were tangentially linked), I never found myself wanting to give up on this. Credit Oe's writing abilities for this. I always trusted that the author knew what he was doing(I suppose his Nobel Prize helped me to trust him).
  
  Japan's postwar politics play a pretty big part in the novel. I wish I'd known a bit more going in.
• 
  Mircalla

  il bambino e lo scrittore
  
  
  Kogito è uno scrittore affermato e il suo migliore amico, Goro, un regista di fama mondiale, quando Goro si suicida, Kogito ne cerca i motivi nelle vecchie conversazioni registrate dal suo amico
  
  Oe Kenzaburo ama raccontare molto della sua storia, in ogni suo libro c'è una parte che attinge al suo passato e questo non fa eccezione, il racconto vero e proprio è molto breve: c'è un bambino che ha avuto un'esperienza traumatica insieme al suo migliore amico, e questo ricordo li seguirà per tutta la vita, ma uno dei due pagherà un prezzo molto alto...
  i bambini nel libro sono diversi, ma solo uno è stato "scambiato" con una copia in ghiaccio, in realtà viene da pensare che in Giappone siano molti quelli che sono stati scambiati con una copia in ghiaccio...e in ogni caso non è cambiato poi molto negli ultimi cento anni: ancora con la storia della resa agli alleati e con mille poveri cristi che si sono immolati per recuperare l'orgoglio perso dall'Imperatore, le donne ancora non capiscono la parole usate dai mariti letterati, il mondo esterno ancora non ha riconosciuto la giapponesità come qualcosa di unico, e le donne se non sono mogli sono donne perdute...
  
  un romanzo bello, evocativo ma anche antico....
  
  
  
• 
  Liz

  I used to live in Japan and I should have known what I was going to get when I opened up this book- a translation of a prizewinning Japanese novel- yet somehow it didn't resonate. Maybe it was the awkwardness of the translation with its clunky conversational style, but I found it hard slog. The title made no sense to me. The characters didn't strike a chord. I think I expected something different- maybe a supernatural yarn?- but intead I got some heavy meditations on death, dying, relationships, and discovering that people are not who you think they are. Shame because there was so much in the premise of a man rediscovering an old friend through a tape recorder and a series of tapes. Maybe I'll try it again in the fall when there's a chill in the air and the days are shorter- Japanese literature seems to make more sense when there is melancholy in the air.
• 
  Ashley

  This book was not easy. I was excited to read a Japanese Nobel laureate in English but this book was so dense, tedious, introspective, and full of obscure references I nearly quit.
  
  About 2/3rds of the way through, though, a casual Google search radically changed my impression. The book referenced the Japanese film Tanpopo, and refreshing my memory on it revealed a connection between the director (Junzo Itami) and the author (Kenzaburo Oe) almost exactly like the one between the main character and his brother-in-law. Suddenly this was almost a memoir.
  
  My favorite section by far through was the end, where Choko's wife Chikashi is deeply moved by a Maurice Sendak picture book.
  
  Those aspects certainly helped me appreciate this book but it was still a challenge.
• 
  Silvia Sba

  Hace poco me conmovió la relación que tiene este autor con su hijo con autismo. No había leído nada suyo. El libro que he escogido forma parte de una trilogía que habla del suicidio de su cuñado. Es como un diario en el que habla de si mismo en tercera persona y con otro nombre. Por casualidad su cuñado era un director de cine conocido que hizo una de mis películas favoritas, Tampopo. Es un libro extraño, no me atrevo a recomendarlo. A mí me ha gustado, aunque algunas partes me han parecido aburridas. El final me dejó sin palabras, me removió por dentro. Pero para entender mejor este libro hay que leer sus primeros libros...
• 
  Ivy-Mabel Fling

  This is a must for anyone wanting to have a better understanding of Death by Water. It is a long, rambling tale whose meanderings fascinated me but would bore those who like an action-packed story. As Kogito's name suggests, it is full of reflection on life (particularly Kogito's and his brother-in-law's) and death, and literary allusions. And, like Death by Water, it indirectly informs the reader about rather unpleasant aspects of Japanese politics and what it means to have a disabled child (these two themes run along in the background throughout the novel). Brilliant but definitely not for everybody.
  
• 
  jennifer

  I don't know, 2 1/2 probably. Now I remember why I kinda like Oe but he's not my fav. The premise and the first third or so is fucking irresistible (over-the-hill Japanese dude listening to his dead friend soliloquize from beyond the grave via outdated audio equipment and big hipster headphones -- holed up night after night in his private bedroom, ignoring his wife and special needs son)... but things kind of go south when Oe layers in the actual story. Plot lines be dangling like threads from Rivers Cuomo's sweater.
• 
  Lewis Manalo

  Yo, this book is intense! "Inspired by" the author's real life friendship with Juzo Itami, director of the classic TAMPOPO who died under mysterious circumstances in the late 90's, the story starts out at a low simmer, and though it never gets overly dramatic, the quiet tension gets unbearable. Thank God for uplifting endings.
• 
  Michael David

  This is my first Kenzaburo Oe novel.
  
  It's readable. I, however, disagree with Oe as regards his perspectives regarding Murakami's works. To me, Murakami is a more eminently readable writer, and a more exciting one, too. I didn't have a hard time reading the novel, but I wasn't really affected either. It's something I won't heartily recommend to anyone, but it's basically an okay read.
• 
  duo-la

  I'm--I don't know, I kind of gave up trying to understand it. It was easy to read, easy to digest, but......eh. Kind of lazy storytelling. Or maybe I'm the lazy one for not trying harder to understand it as it is rather than twist it into what I would understand more easily. Why do all my reviews turn into therapy sessions?! Bah.
• 
  John Armstrong

  I pretty frustrating read for me. It had a strong first act (Tagame), sagged terribly in the second (Berlin), and then was all over the place in the third, introducing the (admittedly interesting) idea that that gave the book its name (changeling) only at the very end. I'm going to give Oe another chance (or two, or three), but he may just be too much of an I-novelist for my tastes.