قصة الكتاب :
Chūōkōron Shinsha, 2012. 528 pp. ¥1,800. ISBN 978-4-12-
004347-5.
Mizumura Minae
Born in Tokyo in 1951. Studied French literature at Yale before
teaching modern Japanese literature at Princeton. Won the Minister
of Education Encouragement Prize for New Artists for Zoku
meian [Light and Darkness Continued] in 1990, the Yomiuri Prize
for Literature for Honkaku shōsetsu [trans. A True Novel] in 2003,
and the Osaragi Jirō Prize for Haha no isan in 2012. Her other works
include Tegami, shiori o soete [Letters with Bookmarks Attached].

This novel focuses on the life of Mitsuki, a fifty-something woman who works
part-time as a university lecturer. There are two main strands to the plot: the
prolonged strains the family undergoes as they care for Mitsuki’s elderly mother
and the story of her husband’s affair with another woman. Mitsuki’s mother, the
daughter of a geisha, remains her freewheeling, selfish, and extravagant self to the
end, pushing the two daughters who look after her—Mitsuki and her older sister,
Natsuki—to their limits.
The novel traces the frenzied final days of the mother’s life, as she is hospitalized
for a fracture and then admitted to a nursing home, where she eventually dies.
In parallel with these events, the novel depicts Mitsuki’s shock when she discovers
her husband’s affair and follows her as she uses her inheritance to achieve
independence and divorce her husband. Despite these weighty subjects, the novel
is saved from becoming grim reading by the invigorating clarity of the prose and
skillful realism with which Mizumura depicts the lives of the comfortably well-off.
It is an accurate depiction of a portion of Japanese society that stands apart from
the commonly discussed “working poor.” The tone of the novel’s strategy is set
from the outset, when the story begins in medias res with a discussion of money
in the course of which the death of the mother is revealed.
The book’s subtitle, Shimbun shōsetsu [A Newspaper Novel], makes it clear that
this is an homage of sorts to a whole literary genre. The novel was serialized in the
Yomiuri Shimbun, appearing in weekly installments in the newspaper for over a
year. Novel serialization continues to hold considerable significance for literature
in Japan. (NM)