Tokyo Ueno Station: A Novel Kindle Edition
by Yu Miri (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 out of 5 stars 28 ratings
Product description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
A surreal, devastating story of a homeless ghost who haunts one of Tokyo's busiest train stations.
Kazu is dead. Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Japanese Emperor, his life is tied by a series of coincidences to the Imperial family and has been shaped at every turn by modern Japanese history. But his life story is also marked by bad luck, and now, in death, he is unable to rest, doomed to haunt the park near Ueno Station in Tokyo.
Kazu's life in the city began and ended in that park; he arrived there to work as a laborer in the preparations for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and ended his days living in the vast homeless village in the park, traumatized by the destruction of the 2011 tsunami and shattered by the announcement of the 2020 Olympics.
Through Kazu's eyes, we see daily life in Tokyo buzz around him and learn the intimate details of his personal story, how loss and society's inequalities and constrictions spiraled towards this ghostly fate, with moments of beauty and grace just out of reach. A powerful masterwork from one of Japan's most brilliant outsider writers, Tokyo Ueno Station is a book for our times and a look into a marginalized existence in a shiny global megapolis.
About the Author
Yu Miri is a writer of plays, prose fiction, and essays, with over twenty books to her name. She received Japan's most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa, and her bestselling memoir was made into a movie. After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima, she began to visit the affected area, hosting a radio show to listen to survivor's stories. She relocated to Fukushima in 2015 and has opened a bookstore and theatre space to continue her cultural work in collaboration with those affected by the disaster.
Morgan Giles is a Japanese translator and reviewer. She lives in London. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Review
Praise for Tokyo Ueno Station and Yu Miri
Tokyo Ueno Station is a dream: a chronicle of hope, loss, where we've been and where we're going. That Yu Miri could conjure so many realities simultaneously is nothing short of marvelous. The novel astounds, terrifies, and make the unseen concrete--entirely tangible and perennially effervescent, right there on the page. --Bryan Washington, author of Lot and Memorial
Glorious. --New York Times Book Review
Poetic... How Kazu comes to be homeless, and then to haunt the park, is what keeps us reading, trying to understand the tragedy of this ghostly everyman. Deftly translated by Morgan Giles... It is an urgent reminder of the radical divide between rich and poor in postwar Japan. --The Guardian
Spare, indelible. --O, the Oprah magazine
"Coolly meditative, subtly spectral... Yu's spare, empathetic prose beautifully expresses Kazu's perspective on the passage of time; he feels a 'constant absence from the present, an anger toward the future.' This slim but sprawling tale finds a deeply sympathetic hero in a man who feels displaced and longs for connection after it's too late." --★Publishers Weekly, STARRED review★
"Restrained and mature. A gemlike, melancholy novel infused with personal and national history." --★Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review★
"A surreal fable of splintered families, disintegrating relationships, and the casual devaluation of humanity." --★Booklist, STARRED review★
A radical and deeply felt work of fiction, psychogeography and history all at once, tapping us straight into the lifeblood of a Tokyo we rarely see: Tokyo from the margins, rooted in the city's most vulnerable and least visible lives - and deaths. --Elaine Castillo. author of America Is Not the Heart
One thing Yu can do is write. She is simultaneously a social outcast and a literary star, a dark, brooding presence on the bookshelves. A creative genius. --New York Times
Yu, an ethnic Korean in Japan, is no stranger to modern society's traps driven by nationalism, capitalism, classism, sexism. Her anglophoned latest (gratitude to translator Giles for providing fluent accessibility) is a surreal fable of splintered families, disintegrating relationships, and the casual devaluation of humanity. --Booklist (Starred Review) --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Product details
File size : 1813 KB
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 189 pages
Publisher : Riverhead Books (23 June 2020)
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
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Tokyo Ueno Station
by
3.63 · Rating details · 2,090 ratings · 323 reviews
Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Emperor, Kazu’s life is tied by a series of coincidences to Japan’s Imperial family and to one particular spot in Tokyo; the park near Ueno Station – the same place his unquiet spirit now haunts in death. It is here that Kazu’s life in Tokyo began, as a labourer in the run up to the 1964 Olympics, and later where he ended his days, living in the park’s vast homeless ‘villages’, traumatised by the destruction of the 2011 tsunami and enraged by the announcement of the 2020 Olympics.
Akutagawa-award-winning author Yū Miri uses her outsider’s perspective as a Zainichi (Korean-Japanese) writer to craft a novel of utmost importance to this moment, a powerful rebuke to the Imperial system and a sensitive, deeply felt depiction of the lives of Japan’s most vulnerable people. (less)
Akutagawa-award-winning author Yū Miri uses her outsider’s perspective as a Zainichi (Korean-Japanese) writer to craft a novel of utmost importance to this moment, a powerful rebuke to the Imperial system and a sensitive, deeply felt depiction of the lives of Japan’s most vulnerable people. (less)
Paperback, 180 pages
Published March 4th 2019 by Tilted Axis Press (first published March 19th 2014)
Original Title
JR上野駅公園口
ISBN
1911284169 (ISBN13: 9781911284161)
Edition Language
English
Literary Awards
Showing 1-30
Each time I read a novel translated from Japanese to English I’m struck by its elegance. The best way I can describe it is a kind of stillness, no matter how much is going on in the story; a calming effect.
Tokyo Ueno Station is a very short, gentle, mournful book, following Kazu, a recently deceased homeless man whose spirit lingers in Ueno Park. Kazu reminisces on his life and the cruel twists of fate that first led him to sleep rough. That he is incorporeal has little impact on the events of the book—this is not a ghost story—but it serves to highlight an important point. To the everyday folk passing through the park, Kazu is no more or less visible than any of the homeless people still living there—all go unnoticed. He watches as the people pass by, catching snippets of their overheard conversations. For the reader it gives the feeling of being on a park bench, people-watching in Tokyo.
In addition to Kazu’s life story, there is also the story of Ueno Park, a significant site over much of Japan’s history, and a glimpse into cultural traditions, such as Buddhist funeral rites. The book’s final scenes shift away from realism into something more dreamlike. I don’t want to spoil anything but it was beautifully done and gave me chills.
If there is such a thing as ‘down-lit’, Tokyo Ueno Station might be it. Such a sad story, but we shouldn’t expect otherwise from a book about homelessness. In the lead up to the Tokyo Olympics this is a timely look at life on Japan’s margins. (less)
Tokyo Ueno Station is a very short, gentle, mournful book, following Kazu, a recently deceased homeless man whose spirit lingers in Ueno Park. Kazu reminisces on his life and the cruel twists of fate that first led him to sleep rough. That he is incorporeal has little impact on the events of the book—this is not a ghost story—but it serves to highlight an important point. To the everyday folk passing through the park, Kazu is no more or less visible than any of the homeless people still living there—all go unnoticed. He watches as the people pass by, catching snippets of their overheard conversations. For the reader it gives the feeling of being on a park bench, people-watching in Tokyo.
In addition to Kazu’s life story, there is also the story of Ueno Park, a significant site over much of Japan’s history, and a glimpse into cultural traditions, such as Buddhist funeral rites. The book’s final scenes shift away from realism into something more dreamlike. I don’t want to spoil anything but it was beautifully done and gave me chills.
If there is such a thing as ‘down-lit’, Tokyo Ueno Station might be it. Such a sad story, but we shouldn’t expect otherwise from a book about homelessness. In the lead up to the Tokyo Olympics this is a timely look at life on Japan’s margins. (less)
Sep 06, 2020Amalia Gkavea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
‘’I used to think life was like a book: you turn the first page, and there’s the next, and as you go on turning page after page eventually you reach the last one. But life is nothing like a story in a book. There may be words, and the pages may be numbered, but there is no plot. There may be an ending, but there is no end.’’
Our journey starts in a park near Ueno Station as Tokyo is preparing to host the 2020 Olympics. A voice is heard above the buzzing streets of the metropolis, a voice whispering of misfortune, failed hopes, injustice and death. A voice from a ghost for Kazu is dead, one of the many hopeless residents of the park. Now, he becomes our guide to the stormy history of Japan through the ages, the social unrest, the changes and the expectation of an uncertain future.
‘’I was always lost at a point in the past which never could go anywhere now it had gone, but has time ended? Has it just stopped? Will it someday rewind and start again? Or will I be shut out from time for eternity? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.’’
Kazu is desperate for a sense of existence. He has been struggling with the ordeals that Fate and humans threw in his way and now he doesn’t know whether he even belongs with the dead. Eavesdropping the daily conversations of the visitors of the park, observing the homeless, he returns to the land of the living and his own life. Linked to the Imperial family through a series of random events, he comments on the futility of being a servant of the state and takes us on a journey within the disputes and changes that shaped the history of Japan. In a park where every tree has a plastic tag attached to its trunk, he is reminded of the fact that everything belongs to the Emperor. What a title, though, in a world where every ‘’empire’’ has fallen to pieces!
‘’One cannot tell when or where each rose is blooming, whether it is in a garden or a flowerpot; whether it is sunny, or cloudy, or raining; whether it is morning, or noon, or night, whether it is spring, or summer, or autumn.’’
Kazu has physically lost all sense of the world around him, yet his perception is more acute than ever. His memories are a tapestry of poverty and struggle in a country that has fallen apart due to its actions during the Second World War and the atrocities it has committed. Hit by the constant rain that reminds him of the ultimate nightmare, the loss of his son, the rituals of death performed in a society chocked by industrialization and the dark presence of nuclear power plants. The roses have lost their colours and their perfume and moments of cruelty are always present.
Hidden behind a beautiful, powerful front cover, lies a bitter observation of a society that has changed, a society that is supposed to have learnt from the past. But has it? To what result? And to what end?
‘’We all have an enormity of time, too big for one person to deal with, and we live, and we die.’’
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.word... (less)
Our journey starts in a park near Ueno Station as Tokyo is preparing to host the 2020 Olympics. A voice is heard above the buzzing streets of the metropolis, a voice whispering of misfortune, failed hopes, injustice and death. A voice from a ghost for Kazu is dead, one of the many hopeless residents of the park. Now, he becomes our guide to the stormy history of Japan through the ages, the social unrest, the changes and the expectation of an uncertain future.
‘’I was always lost at a point in the past which never could go anywhere now it had gone, but has time ended? Has it just stopped? Will it someday rewind and start again? Or will I be shut out from time for eternity? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.’’
Kazu is desperate for a sense of existence. He has been struggling with the ordeals that Fate and humans threw in his way and now he doesn’t know whether he even belongs with the dead. Eavesdropping the daily conversations of the visitors of the park, observing the homeless, he returns to the land of the living and his own life. Linked to the Imperial family through a series of random events, he comments on the futility of being a servant of the state and takes us on a journey within the disputes and changes that shaped the history of Japan. In a park where every tree has a plastic tag attached to its trunk, he is reminded of the fact that everything belongs to the Emperor. What a title, though, in a world where every ‘’empire’’ has fallen to pieces!
‘’One cannot tell when or where each rose is blooming, whether it is in a garden or a flowerpot; whether it is sunny, or cloudy, or raining; whether it is morning, or noon, or night, whether it is spring, or summer, or autumn.’’
Kazu has physically lost all sense of the world around him, yet his perception is more acute than ever. His memories are a tapestry of poverty and struggle in a country that has fallen apart due to its actions during the Second World War and the atrocities it has committed. Hit by the constant rain that reminds him of the ultimate nightmare, the loss of his son, the rituals of death performed in a society chocked by industrialization and the dark presence of nuclear power plants. The roses have lost their colours and their perfume and moments of cruelty are always present.
Hidden behind a beautiful, powerful front cover, lies a bitter observation of a society that has changed, a society that is supposed to have learnt from the past. But has it? To what result? And to what end?
‘’We all have an enormity of time, too big for one person to deal with, and we live, and we die.’’
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.word... (less)
Now a deserved winner of National Book Award for Translated Fiction 2020
My review from April 2019, when it was originally published in the UK by Tilted Axis Press:
Tokyo Ueno Station is the latest book from the wonderful Tilted Axis Press, translated by Morgan Giles from Yu Miri (柳 美里 / 유미리)'s 2014 novel JR上野駅公園口 and a powerful exploration of the other side of economic development and prestigious projects.
The novel begins with a lament part of which reads:
Left behind—
Like a sculpted tree on the vacant land where a rotted house has been torn down.
Like the water in a vase from which wilted flowers have been removed.
Left behind.
But then what of me remains here?
A sense of tiredness.
I was always tired.
There was never a time I was not tired.
Not when life had its claws in me, or when I escaped from it.
I did not live with intent, I only lived.
But that's over.
before our narrator locates us:
If you go out the ticket gates at JR Ueno Station’s Park exit, and look over the the thicket of ginkgo trees, you’ll always see homeless people there.
For me, and most visitors to, or inhabitants of, Tokyo, one thinks of Ueno Park as the place one takes the Yamanote line to visit in cherry blossom season, or at any other time for the many museums or and the zoo. But situated right in prime Tokyo, is a large community of the homeless:
To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past, while still being in full view of everyone.
Our narrator is Kazu, now (as becomes quickly clear) a ghost, relatively recently deceased, but a former inhabitant of the homeless community.
The novel, which he relates in a very non-linear fashion, takes us through his life and what bought him to living in the makeshift shelters in the park:
Before, we had families. We had houses. Nobody starts off life in a hovel made of cardboard and tarps, and nobody becomes homeless because they want to be. One thing happens, then another.
Born in Fukushima in 1933 - the same year as the Emperor Akihito - his son was born in 1960, the same year as Crown Prince Naruhito (who will in fact ascend to the Chrysanthemum Throne in May 2019). But the life of Kazu is very different to that of the Emperor, who he sees one day in his motorcade: a life that had never known struggle, envy or aimlessness - one that had lived the same seventy-three years that I had.
Kazu migrated to Tokyo in 1963, arriving in Ueno station, and working as a day labourer in the construction effort for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. His subsequent life was that of an itinerant labourer, helping to build the economic future of Japan while struggling to maintain his own, his wife and two children left in Fukushima, their lives barely known to him as he strives to provide for them, returning to his hometown only when tragedy strikes.
Kazu's narration covers not just his life, but intersperses the dark history of Ueno Park (bloody battles around the time of the Meiji Restoration, earthquakes, the firebombing of the City in WW2) as well as his observations of the homeless still in the park, snatches of conversation from more well-heeled visitors, Buddhist funeral rights and even a series of beautiful verbal images of roses based on the series by the 18th-19th century French botanical painter Pierre-Joseph Redouté.
That the author has her narrator hail from Fukushima, now known worldwide due to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, is no coincidence. The novel was written in response to both the Tokyo 2020 Olympic bid but also the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which overshadows Kazu's thoughts from the novel's very opening words:
There’s that sound again.
That sound—
I hear it.
But I don’t know if it’s in my ears or in my mind.
I don’t know if it’s inside me or outside.
The novel, in terms of focusing on the downside of and loses from economic development, has similarities with the Man Booker International longlisted At Dusk, but this is a far superior novel. Crucially, unlike Hwang Sok-Yong who chose a narrator with which he had no sympathy, Yu's compassion and empathy is evident on every beautifully moving page. Yu Miri herself is a 'Zainichi' (조선계 일본인, Korean ancestry, born and living in Japan) giving her an outsider status in both countries. And following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, she moved to the Fukushima region to support the area.
I quoted Kuzu early that To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past, while still being in full view of everyone but there are some days the homeless aren’t even allowed to be in full view and are forced, often at short notice, to tear down their shelters and move to another area, or vacate the park: when the Imperial family come to Ueno to visit the museums; or when the Olympic Committee are in town.
Although the 2020 Olympics is barely mentioned - indeed when the novel was set, Tokyo was bidding to win them - the author in an interview has made it clear that this is key to the novel.
My review from April 2019, when it was originally published in the UK by Tilted Axis Press:
Tokyo Ueno Station is the latest book from the wonderful Tilted Axis Press, translated by Morgan Giles from Yu Miri (柳 美里 / 유미리)'s 2014 novel JR上野駅公園口 and a powerful exploration of the other side of economic development and prestigious projects.
The novel begins with a lament part of which reads:
Left behind—
Like a sculpted tree on the vacant land where a rotted house has been torn down.
Like the water in a vase from which wilted flowers have been removed.
Left behind.
But then what of me remains here?
A sense of tiredness.
I was always tired.
There was never a time I was not tired.
Not when life had its claws in me, or when I escaped from it.
I did not live with intent, I only lived.
But that's over.
before our narrator locates us:
If you go out the ticket gates at JR Ueno Station’s Park exit, and look over the the thicket of ginkgo trees, you’ll always see homeless people there.
For me, and most visitors to, or inhabitants of, Tokyo, one thinks of Ueno Park as the place one takes the Yamanote line to visit in cherry blossom season, or at any other time for the many museums or and the zoo. But situated right in prime Tokyo, is a large community of the homeless:
To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past, while still being in full view of everyone.
Our narrator is Kazu, now (as becomes quickly clear) a ghost, relatively recently deceased, but a former inhabitant of the homeless community.
The novel, which he relates in a very non-linear fashion, takes us through his life and what bought him to living in the makeshift shelters in the park:
Before, we had families. We had houses. Nobody starts off life in a hovel made of cardboard and tarps, and nobody becomes homeless because they want to be. One thing happens, then another.
Born in Fukushima in 1933 - the same year as the Emperor Akihito - his son was born in 1960, the same year as Crown Prince Naruhito (who will in fact ascend to the Chrysanthemum Throne in May 2019). But the life of Kazu is very different to that of the Emperor, who he sees one day in his motorcade: a life that had never known struggle, envy or aimlessness - one that had lived the same seventy-three years that I had.
Kazu migrated to Tokyo in 1963, arriving in Ueno station, and working as a day labourer in the construction effort for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. His subsequent life was that of an itinerant labourer, helping to build the economic future of Japan while struggling to maintain his own, his wife and two children left in Fukushima, their lives barely known to him as he strives to provide for them, returning to his hometown only when tragedy strikes.
Kazu's narration covers not just his life, but intersperses the dark history of Ueno Park (bloody battles around the time of the Meiji Restoration, earthquakes, the firebombing of the City in WW2) as well as his observations of the homeless still in the park, snatches of conversation from more well-heeled visitors, Buddhist funeral rights and even a series of beautiful verbal images of roses based on the series by the 18th-19th century French botanical painter Pierre-Joseph Redouté.
That the author has her narrator hail from Fukushima, now known worldwide due to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, is no coincidence. The novel was written in response to both the Tokyo 2020 Olympic bid but also the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which overshadows Kazu's thoughts from the novel's very opening words:
There’s that sound again.
That sound—
I hear it.
But I don’t know if it’s in my ears or in my mind.
I don’t know if it’s inside me or outside.
The novel, in terms of focusing on the downside of and loses from economic development, has similarities with the Man Booker International longlisted At Dusk, but this is a far superior novel. Crucially, unlike Hwang Sok-Yong who chose a narrator with which he had no sympathy, Yu's compassion and empathy is evident on every beautifully moving page. Yu Miri herself is a 'Zainichi' (조선계 일본인, Korean ancestry, born and living in Japan) giving her an outsider status in both countries. And following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, she moved to the Fukushima region to support the area.
I quoted Kuzu early that To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past, while still being in full view of everyone but there are some days the homeless aren’t even allowed to be in full view and are forced, often at short notice, to tear down their shelters and move to another area, or vacate the park: when the Imperial family come to Ueno to visit the museums; or when the Olympic Committee are in town.
Although the 2020 Olympics is barely mentioned - indeed when the novel was set, Tokyo was bidding to win them - the author in an interview has made it clear that this is key to the novel.
Q: The Olympic Games are going to be held in Tokyo in 2020. Do you plan on writing anything to do with that?Morgan Giles does a wonderful job for her first full-length translation and, in addition to her undoubted linguistic skills, this is also a function of her personal passion for the novel's message. From an interview:
A: My book “JR Ueno Eki Koenguchi” depicts the story of people from a very poor region of Tohoku who left their homes to work on preparing for the first Tokyo Olympics held just after the war, but who were used and discarded, ultimately becoming homeless. In the present day too, all the manual labourers on building sites across the entirety of Eastern Japan, including Tohoku, are being drawn away to the Olympic venue sites as the money is better there. Because of that there are no people working on the reconstruction and decontamination in Tohoku. Thus these sites are having to recruit from regions where wages are low, such as Nishinari in Osaka or from Okinawa, and that means that the people who do come are only one step away from homeless themselves; people who have no insurance, no family and who may already be ill. So in Minami Soma today you see these migrant labourers without insurance coming to the hospitals for consultations and then running away when the time comes to pay. There are also a lot of alcoholics and it is affecting public peace and safety. It is bad for the region but on the other hand I truly do feel sorry for the migrant workers themselves. Some of them even pass away while they are working, stung by wasps or having accidents on the building sites etc. When one of those people dies, nobody will come to collect their bones after cremation. There is a temple close to my home and you can see how the temples in Minami Soma have now become the final resting places for the bones of the poorest minimum wage migrant labourers from all across the nation. I want to write about this, a part of the reality of the Tokyo Olympics after all.
Q: The protagonist Kazu’s life began as a labourer ahead of the 1964 Olympics. With the 2020 Olympics around the corner, how do you feel Yu Miri’s work and your translation of Tokyo Ueno Station are contributing to the conversation by bringing to the centre of the page those on the peripheries of Japanese society?Highly recommended. 4.5 stars. (less)
A: I hope it’s the flaw in the jewel, as the phrase goes in Japanese. I hope people can’t watch the opening ceremonies without feeling physically sick that labour, time and money were diverted from recovery efforts in the North-Eastern coastal region to build Olympic facilities. That homeless people have been evicted from parks in Tokyo because their presence isn’t compatible with the Olympic dream. That homeless people from as far south as Okinawa are being hired to do construction in the North-Eastern coastal region because companies are that hard up for labourers, leading to a situation that Miri calls “a reverse Tokyo Ueno Station” – these homeless labourers are dying in Fukushima, names unknown and no relatives to be traced, with nowhere for their remains to go except a temple that has agreed to be the final resting place for these anonymous men who worked until they died to rebuild a country that doesn’t care about them.
Now Winner of the National Book Award for Translated Fiction 2020
To be poor means to be invisible: "Tokyo Ueno Station" tells the story of a laborer who had to work hard all of his life in order to support his family only to end up homeless in Ueno Park near the title-giving railway station. Our protagonist Kazu Mori was born into a poor family in Fukushima and when he himself gets married and has children, he has to spend most of his time away from them, trying to earn enough money in far-away towns. A family tragedy brutally confronts him with the fact that he is alienated from the people he loves, that he has spent his life toiling away out of necessity while the "grandfather clock", which features again and again in the text, has mercilessly measured the time that has passed him by. Kazu starts falling apart.
The narrative clue: Yes, the version of Kazu who tells us his story is now physically dead, a ghost roaming the park and the station, but was he ever alive to mainstream society? Kazu was born in 1933, the same year as Emperor Akihito, his son on the same day as Crown Prince Naruhito (the current Emperor of Japan), but while the Imperial family lives a carefree, "pure" life, Kazu's poverty amounts to a "sin", as it leads him to make decisions he himself disapproves of, which ultimately breaks him.
Yu Miri spoke to homeless people in Ueno Park to be able to properly convey their perspectives, and as they of course differ, the short novel also tells the stories of some other homeless people Kazu meets. On top of that, Kazu's life story, the monuments, sights and exhibitions in and near the park as well as Japanese history are steadily connected and contrasted, and Kazu frequently listens to passersby and absorbs their dialogues. The result is a fragmented text which is held together mainly by a mounting sense of doom.
The author of this book knows a thing or two about inequality: As the daughter of Korean immigrants, she is a so-called Zainichi, part of a discriminated minority (you can learn more about this in the novel Pachinko or the non-fiction book Three Tigers, One Mountain: A Journey Through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea, and Japan). The outsider is forced to live in-between, in a constant state of transit, and the question of belonging, of finding or losing a home is a constant theme throughout the novel.
While the structure of the book is ambitious and well thought out, the fragmented style does not develop a pull that would make the story truly immersive. Many explanatory passages about monuments or historical events seem a little excessive, some dialogues are contrived. Still, this is an interesting experiment, full of empathy and deeply sad. (less)
To be poor means to be invisible: "Tokyo Ueno Station" tells the story of a laborer who had to work hard all of his life in order to support his family only to end up homeless in Ueno Park near the title-giving railway station. Our protagonist Kazu Mori was born into a poor family in Fukushima and when he himself gets married and has children, he has to spend most of his time away from them, trying to earn enough money in far-away towns. A family tragedy brutally confronts him with the fact that he is alienated from the people he loves, that he has spent his life toiling away out of necessity while the "grandfather clock", which features again and again in the text, has mercilessly measured the time that has passed him by. Kazu starts falling apart.
The narrative clue: Yes, the version of Kazu who tells us his story is now physically dead, a ghost roaming the park and the station, but was he ever alive to mainstream society? Kazu was born in 1933, the same year as Emperor Akihito, his son on the same day as Crown Prince Naruhito (the current Emperor of Japan), but while the Imperial family lives a carefree, "pure" life, Kazu's poverty amounts to a "sin", as it leads him to make decisions he himself disapproves of, which ultimately breaks him.
Yu Miri spoke to homeless people in Ueno Park to be able to properly convey their perspectives, and as they of course differ, the short novel also tells the stories of some other homeless people Kazu meets. On top of that, Kazu's life story, the monuments, sights and exhibitions in and near the park as well as Japanese history are steadily connected and contrasted, and Kazu frequently listens to passersby and absorbs their dialogues. The result is a fragmented text which is held together mainly by a mounting sense of doom.
The author of this book knows a thing or two about inequality: As the daughter of Korean immigrants, she is a so-called Zainichi, part of a discriminated minority (you can learn more about this in the novel Pachinko or the non-fiction book Three Tigers, One Mountain: A Journey Through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea, and Japan). The outsider is forced to live in-between, in a constant state of transit, and the question of belonging, of finding or losing a home is a constant theme throughout the novel.
While the structure of the book is ambitious and well thought out, the fragmented style does not develop a pull that would make the story truly immersive. Many explanatory passages about monuments or historical events seem a little excessive, some dialogues are contrived. Still, this is an interesting experiment, full of empathy and deeply sad. (less)
Sad, still and rather uneven. More interesting as a concept than as an executed novel
To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past, while still being in full view of everyone
If I don’t exist I can’t disappear either.
We follow in a non-linear fashion Kazu, who appears to be a ghost based on the blurb on Tokyo Ueno Station. His ghost like status might be a symbol of how homeless people are not noticed by passing salarymen and “people with homes” in general.
His life story tells a tale of post-war hardship and the plight of one working away from home, sending money back, but missing the growing up of his children. His plight is told in a beautiful way by Miri Yū:
I never carried any photos with me, but I was always surrounded by people, places and times gone by. And as I retreated into the future, the only thing I could ever see was the past.
It was nothing as sweet as nostalgia or a longing for bygone days, just a constant absence from the present, an anger toward the future.
Hidden within today was a past longer than the present.
Kazu his life is a mirror to the life of the wealthy and powerful. He is born on the same day as the Emperor and his son is born on the same day as the crown prince. However he is clearly out of luck and catastrophes befall him and his family consistently during the whole book. Even the tsunami in his hometown Fukushima comes back in the last few pages of the book. Due to the barrage like gloom of these events I in the end felt kind of numb in respect to the story of Kazu.
What did hit me on an emotional level as a reader is the cruelty of anti homeless measures, to keep them moving, to get rid of their sleeping places by beautifying parks, by forcing them away when the emperor visits a museum.
Do we as society see these people or are they just unsightly obstacles? This is a question the author brings up with incredible power and integrity.
Things like that always made me feel lonely when I was alive.
During the book we have a lot of focus on descriptions of nature, from the park wherein Kazu spend the last years of his life to a narration of a flower painting exhibition in one of the Ueno museums.
In general there are lots of monologues, some very mundane (about sardines or dried cuttlefish in relation to cats vitamine B1 deficits) to almost infodump like (about the Meiji restoration, Ueno park itself and roses oddly enough). Still an appendix with terminology might have helped in this translation, I’m very much into Japanese culture and literature but the specifics of a Buddhist Pureland funeral are a bit over my head.
Overall I found this slim novella more interesting in themes and topics than in the factual execution. The stage writing background of the author is clear in the way she enlivens scenes with sensory observations, but strangely enough convincing dialogues are very much lacking.
This book reminded me in a way of The Last Children of Tokyo; full of atmosphere and ideas, but in the end unsatisfyingly worked out. (less)
To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past, while still being in full view of everyone
If I don’t exist I can’t disappear either.
We follow in a non-linear fashion Kazu, who appears to be a ghost based on the blurb on Tokyo Ueno Station. His ghost like status might be a symbol of how homeless people are not noticed by passing salarymen and “people with homes” in general.
His life story tells a tale of post-war hardship and the plight of one working away from home, sending money back, but missing the growing up of his children. His plight is told in a beautiful way by Miri Yū:
I never carried any photos with me, but I was always surrounded by people, places and times gone by. And as I retreated into the future, the only thing I could ever see was the past.
It was nothing as sweet as nostalgia or a longing for bygone days, just a constant absence from the present, an anger toward the future.
Hidden within today was a past longer than the present.
Kazu his life is a mirror to the life of the wealthy and powerful. He is born on the same day as the Emperor and his son is born on the same day as the crown prince. However he is clearly out of luck and catastrophes befall him and his family consistently during the whole book. Even the tsunami in his hometown Fukushima comes back in the last few pages of the book. Due to the barrage like gloom of these events I in the end felt kind of numb in respect to the story of Kazu.
What did hit me on an emotional level as a reader is the cruelty of anti homeless measures, to keep them moving, to get rid of their sleeping places by beautifying parks, by forcing them away when the emperor visits a museum.
Do we as society see these people or are they just unsightly obstacles? This is a question the author brings up with incredible power and integrity.
Things like that always made me feel lonely when I was alive.
During the book we have a lot of focus on descriptions of nature, from the park wherein Kazu spend the last years of his life to a narration of a flower painting exhibition in one of the Ueno museums.
In general there are lots of monologues, some very mundane (about sardines or dried cuttlefish in relation to cats vitamine B1 deficits) to almost infodump like (about the Meiji restoration, Ueno park itself and roses oddly enough). Still an appendix with terminology might have helped in this translation, I’m very much into Japanese culture and literature but the specifics of a Buddhist Pureland funeral are a bit over my head.
Overall I found this slim novella more interesting in themes and topics than in the factual execution. The stage writing background of the author is clear in the way she enlivens scenes with sensory observations, but strangely enough convincing dialogues are very much lacking.
This book reminded me in a way of The Last Children of Tokyo; full of atmosphere and ideas, but in the end unsatisfyingly worked out. (less)
Apr 30, 2020Jr Bacdayan rated it liked it
The mesmerizing glow of deep melancholia emanates from this little book. I felt its slow pull deep in my bones. This should come with a word of precaution for those of us that are fragile, those among us barely holding on.
Like the setting and the historical aspects. Some parts of the story were really engaging but a lot of it was not.
Tokyo Ueno Station centered around the tragic figure of the male narrator, who takes the reader through the historical events that took place in Japan after WWII, and they were somehow related to his own life.
You never really had luck, his mother told him once and, truly, the hero seems to be running out of it till the very final pages of this novella. His life was full of struggles and tragedies, while correlating with the big events in the Emperor's shiny life. And yet the narrator doesn't seem to give up on life, he doesn't even take it upon the Emperor when he makes the comparison of his situation with the latter's. Life seems to go on all around him, as it is shown by the small incidents and stolen conversations at the Ueno Station, where the homeless man is usually passes by. The books main theme, actually, except from the historical events, is the motif of life and death. That duo plays a central role in the character's life, and, in the end, he comes it terms with it and gives a hopeful node to the reader to not give up.
However, even though the story was deep and thought-provoking, it tended to get stuck between repetition and the back and forth pattern of the narration. That resulted in some boring passages that put the smooth storyline on a standstill for a while.
So, overall, even though the writer did a great job with the portrayal of the character and the history of Japan, giving emotional punches here and there, the novella ended up tiring to read.
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You never really had luck, his mother told him once and, truly, the hero seems to be running out of it till the very final pages of this novella. His life was full of struggles and tragedies, while correlating with the big events in the Emperor's shiny life. And yet the narrator doesn't seem to give up on life, he doesn't even take it upon the Emperor when he makes the comparison of his situation with the latter's. Life seems to go on all around him, as it is shown by the small incidents and stolen conversations at the Ueno Station, where the homeless man is usually passes by. The books main theme, actually, except from the historical events, is the motif of life and death. That duo plays a central role in the character's life, and, in the end, he comes it terms with it and gives a hopeful node to the reader to not give up.
However, even though the story was deep and thought-provoking, it tended to get stuck between repetition and the back and forth pattern of the narration. That resulted in some boring passages that put the smooth storyline on a standstill for a while.
So, overall, even though the writer did a great job with the portrayal of the character and the history of Japan, giving emotional punches here and there, the novella ended up tiring to read.
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Aug 31, 2019Tanya rated it really liked it · review of another edition
This short novella on cultural memory narrated by a homeless man whose spirit lingers on in Ueno Park after his death was the first translated work where I was struck by the simple and fluid elegance of the language, something I had all but given up on based on the other translations of Japanese works I'd sampled so far.
The protagonist's life is intertwined with that of his Emperor by a series of coincidences; they were born the same year, both of their sons were born on the same day, and they are often tied to the same spots. Kazu is a hard-working family man who labored in the capital during the run up to the 1964 Olympics, and was then one of the many migrant workers forming the backbone of Japan's economic rise. The novel recounts the twists of fate and circumstance that led to him becoming one of the unfortunate souls in the vast homeless tarp tent camps in one of Tokyo's most famous public parks.
His often stream-of-consciousness reminiscences are woven together with snippets of overheard conversations of passersby, as well as with bits and pieces forming a picture of Ueno's long history: Once the site of a bloody battle during the Civil war which resulted in the Meiji Restoration, it suffered earthquakes and firebombings, is now famous for its museums, temples and shrines, the zoo, and as a prime cherry blossom viewing spot... and where the presence of homeless squatters is accepted, or at least somewhat tolerated (until the Imperial family comes through to visit an exhibition, or the Olympic committee pays a visit, and they are forced to vacate the park at short notice, with all they own).
Tokyo Ueno Station combines personal tragedies with wider social problems in a gentle, compassionate, and poignant critique of economic development, showcasing the working class it leaves behind in their struggle. As we near the 2020 Olympics in Japan, it's a timely (and very much intended) reminder that the unsavory sides of an event of such magnitude need to be addressed instead of swept under the rug, so that the already underappreciated aren't further taken advantage of, only to be discarded and pushed to the margins of society even more, as has happened before. (less)
"I used to think life was like a book: You turn the first page, and there's the next, and as you go on turning page after page, eventually you reach the last one. But life is nothing like a story in a book. There may be words, and the pages may be numbered, but there is no plot. There may be an ending, but there is no end.
Left behind—
Like a sculpted tree on the vacant land where a rotted house has been torn down.
Like the water in a vase after wilted flowers have been removed.
Left behind.
But then what of me remains here?
A sense of tiredness.
I was always tired.
There was never a time I was not tired.
Not when life had its claws in me, and not when I escaped from it.
I did not live with intent, I only lived.
But that's all over now."
The protagonist's life is intertwined with that of his Emperor by a series of coincidences; they were born the same year, both of their sons were born on the same day, and they are often tied to the same spots. Kazu is a hard-working family man who labored in the capital during the run up to the 1964 Olympics, and was then one of the many migrant workers forming the backbone of Japan's economic rise. The novel recounts the twists of fate and circumstance that led to him becoming one of the unfortunate souls in the vast homeless tarp tent camps in one of Tokyo's most famous public parks.
"Before, we had families. We had houses. Nobody starts off life in a hovel made of cardboard and tarps, and nobody becomes homeless because they want to be. One thing happens, then another."
His often stream-of-consciousness reminiscences are woven together with snippets of overheard conversations of passersby, as well as with bits and pieces forming a picture of Ueno's long history: Once the site of a bloody battle during the Civil war which resulted in the Meiji Restoration, it suffered earthquakes and firebombings, is now famous for its museums, temples and shrines, the zoo, and as a prime cherry blossom viewing spot... and where the presence of homeless squatters is accepted, or at least somewhat tolerated (until the Imperial family comes through to visit an exhibition, or the Olympic committee pays a visit, and they are forced to vacate the park at short notice, with all they own).
"To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past, while still being in full view of everyone."
Tokyo Ueno Station combines personal tragedies with wider social problems in a gentle, compassionate, and poignant critique of economic development, showcasing the working class it leaves behind in their struggle. As we near the 2020 Olympics in Japan, it's a timely (and very much intended) reminder that the unsavory sides of an event of such magnitude need to be addressed instead of swept under the rug, so that the already underappreciated aren't further taken advantage of, only to be discarded and pushed to the margins of society even more, as has happened before. (less)
Jul 02, 2019Katie Lumsden rated it liked it
Maybe 3.5. I enjoyed this one - an intriguing, curious and sometimes confusing read. There were some really powerful moments, though it did take me a while to get into it.
4.5, rounded up. Thoughts to follow.
Mar 28, 2020Emily M rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: favorites, oh-city-city
4.5 stars
A short, quiet book that nonetheless needs to be read with attention. I expected to whiz through it in a day, took three, and I think I’m going to reread it.
This is part of the literary sub-genre in which the individual’s story is entwined with the story of urban development. Here, Kuzu is a former labourer who was brought to Tokyo as part of the construction phase of the 1964 Olympics. He finished life living rough in Ueno Park, and is now a ghost observing the daily comings and goings, and reflecting on the significant events of his own unlucky and unfulfilling life. Along the way, it’s an indictment of the bid for the 2020 Olympics (particularly haunting to read given that even more time and money has been wasted on them given their postponement due to COVID-19) and the way the homeless are made to disappear from urban spaces when they are considered to be particularly in the way.
I’m a huge fan of short, unsentimental novels that pack an emotional punch, and this one really delivers. The translation is beautiful, supple, a literary achievement in its own right. I read this as a free ebook, but I’m actually going to buy a physical copy, because it’s a delight, and I’d like to have it around the house.
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A short, quiet book that nonetheless needs to be read with attention. I expected to whiz through it in a day, took three, and I think I’m going to reread it.
This is part of the literary sub-genre in which the individual’s story is entwined with the story of urban development. Here, Kuzu is a former labourer who was brought to Tokyo as part of the construction phase of the 1964 Olympics. He finished life living rough in Ueno Park, and is now a ghost observing the daily comings and goings, and reflecting on the significant events of his own unlucky and unfulfilling life. Along the way, it’s an indictment of the bid for the 2020 Olympics (particularly haunting to read given that even more time and money has been wasted on them given their postponement due to COVID-19) and the way the homeless are made to disappear from urban spaces when they are considered to be particularly in the way.
I’m a huge fan of short, unsentimental novels that pack an emotional punch, and this one really delivers. The translation is beautiful, supple, a literary achievement in its own right. I read this as a free ebook, but I’m actually going to buy a physical copy, because it’s a delight, and I’d like to have it around the house.
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Jan 04, 2020Alan rated it it was amazing
‘I was always lost at a point in the past that would never go anywhere now that it had gone, but has time ended? Has it just stopped? Will it someday rewind and start again? Or will I be shut out from time for eternity? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.’
This is a hauntingly beautiful, desperately elegiac, and quietly angry novel from Yu Miri. The pervading sense of melancholy and the stark lyricism of the prose makes her story of Kazu a sweeping study of a nation and its history. Here, Kazu - who we discover quite soon in to the book is a spirit or ghost – watches those among whom he used to mix, the busy crowds of shoppers and residents, and the homeless, gathered together in the park in their make-shift shelters. As the book travels forwards and back in time we learn Kazu’s personal story as it becomes intertwined with the development of Japan, and Tokyo in particular, after World War 2. He had travelled to the city for work, leaving his wife and family, and then personal tragedies leave him homeless and rootless in Tokyo. The very heart of the book, literally and metaphorically, is the loss of his son Koichi and how this impacts on his life. Their lives are superimposed on the lives of the Imperial family; Kazu was born in the same year as Emperor Akihito, and his son on the very same day as his successor, Naruhito. As the homeless are periodically cleared out of the park, sometimes when the Imperial family are visiting nearby, later as the Olympic committees visit to choose Tokyo as host city for 2020, the difference in status could not be clearer.
Kazu’s spiritual existence seems to be some sort of limbo and, as the novel concludes, we are left with a strong suggestion for his cause of death, and hence a reason why he has been left this way. He drifts in and out of conversations, hearing snatches of talk between people as they go about their daily business. The general air of melancholy is matched by the weather, where it always seems to be raining, and the gentle falling of the cherry blossom, suggestive of so much in Japanese culture. The prose itself is simple, with oftentimes a haiku-like compactness of imagery from the very beginning:
‘Left behind –
Like a sculpted tree on the vacant land where a rotted house has been torn down.
Like the water in a vase after wilted flowers have been removed.
Left behind.’
The park itself becomes a focus of our attention, being the place where so much of its history is the history of the city, from the fire-bombing in 1945 to previous earthquakes and disasters. It is a place of refuge, but also the place of death, and the tide of people and the transient homeless population are the modern inheritors of the place. Kazu’s life is the story of modern Tokyo and Japan; from the 1964 Olympics to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Kazu is some sort of everyman figure leading us as he tries to find some sort of redemption. His journey, our journey, is his way of working back through his life to the moment of his death, in an effort to find some meaning and a conclusion.
Profound and haunting, this is a book that will stay with me for some time, I think. It’s not exactly a laugh a minute, but bear with it and it will reward you. A personal journey that becomes a wider, cultural exploration, this is an important work that gives a voice to the unheard in a quietly devastating way. 5 stars.
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This is a hauntingly beautiful, desperately elegiac, and quietly angry novel from Yu Miri. The pervading sense of melancholy and the stark lyricism of the prose makes her story of Kazu a sweeping study of a nation and its history. Here, Kazu - who we discover quite soon in to the book is a spirit or ghost – watches those among whom he used to mix, the busy crowds of shoppers and residents, and the homeless, gathered together in the park in their make-shift shelters. As the book travels forwards and back in time we learn Kazu’s personal story as it becomes intertwined with the development of Japan, and Tokyo in particular, after World War 2. He had travelled to the city for work, leaving his wife and family, and then personal tragedies leave him homeless and rootless in Tokyo. The very heart of the book, literally and metaphorically, is the loss of his son Koichi and how this impacts on his life. Their lives are superimposed on the lives of the Imperial family; Kazu was born in the same year as Emperor Akihito, and his son on the very same day as his successor, Naruhito. As the homeless are periodically cleared out of the park, sometimes when the Imperial family are visiting nearby, later as the Olympic committees visit to choose Tokyo as host city for 2020, the difference in status could not be clearer.
Kazu’s spiritual existence seems to be some sort of limbo and, as the novel concludes, we are left with a strong suggestion for his cause of death, and hence a reason why he has been left this way. He drifts in and out of conversations, hearing snatches of talk between people as they go about their daily business. The general air of melancholy is matched by the weather, where it always seems to be raining, and the gentle falling of the cherry blossom, suggestive of so much in Japanese culture. The prose itself is simple, with oftentimes a haiku-like compactness of imagery from the very beginning:
‘Left behind –
Like a sculpted tree on the vacant land where a rotted house has been torn down.
Like the water in a vase after wilted flowers have been removed.
Left behind.’
The park itself becomes a focus of our attention, being the place where so much of its history is the history of the city, from the fire-bombing in 1945 to previous earthquakes and disasters. It is a place of refuge, but also the place of death, and the tide of people and the transient homeless population are the modern inheritors of the place. Kazu’s life is the story of modern Tokyo and Japan; from the 1964 Olympics to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Kazu is some sort of everyman figure leading us as he tries to find some sort of redemption. His journey, our journey, is his way of working back through his life to the moment of his death, in an effort to find some meaning and a conclusion.
Profound and haunting, this is a book that will stay with me for some time, I think. It’s not exactly a laugh a minute, but bear with it and it will reward you. A personal journey that becomes a wider, cultural exploration, this is an important work that gives a voice to the unheard in a quietly devastating way. 5 stars.
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My first instinct after reading Yu Miri’s “Tokyo Ueno Station” is to ask why horribly random and tragic things happen to good people.
How does somebody become homeless, subject to the whims of weather, police always moving you around, or random violence?
Why do our loved ones die sudden, occasionally painful, deaths?
Why do the majority of people you encounter look at you but never really see you?
Our narrator experiences all of these things and more and yet to answer the fort part part of th ...more
How does somebody become homeless, subject to the whims of weather, police always moving you around, or random violence?
Why do our loved ones die sudden, occasionally painful, deaths?
Why do the majority of people you encounter look at you but never really see you?
Our narrator experiences all of these things and more and yet to answer the fort part part of th ...more
A short heartbreaking story about a man that worked tirelessly taking care of his siblings, then his own family to only be forever homeless and starving. His ghost is homeless as well watching his life play out and where it really went downhill. The translation is a bit disjointed but still reads clear enough.
Oct 19, 2020Stefani Putria rated it really liked it · review of another edition
" I used to think life was like a book: you turn the first page, and there’s the next, and as you go on turning page after page, eventually you reach the last one. But life is nothing like a story in a book. There may be words, and the pages may be numbered, but there is no plot. There may be an ending, but there is no end."
Menemukan buku ini dari kumpulan jurnal membaca nya mas Eka Kurniawan. I really love the opening sentence. Tokyo Ueno Station bisa dikatakan semacam slice of life khas buku-buku jepang dengan membawa dark and deep tema, diambil dari pov kazu homeless ghost that still wandering around ueno park. Menceritakan flashback kehidupan dia full of bad luck and living in poverty. Hampir di setiap paragraf ngerasa banyak related sama kehidupan kazu, pas bagian how he feel after he only son died young 😭😭😭. Mungkin bagi sebagian orang buku ini akan kelihatan membosankan karena narasi nya sedikit mendayu.
Seperti kata mas Eka di jurnalnya, ' I could adapt to any kind of work; it was life itself that I could not adjust to. The pain of life, the sadness . . . and the joy . . .' (less)
Menemukan buku ini dari kumpulan jurnal membaca nya mas Eka Kurniawan. I really love the opening sentence. Tokyo Ueno Station bisa dikatakan semacam slice of life khas buku-buku jepang dengan membawa dark and deep tema, diambil dari pov kazu homeless ghost that still wandering around ueno park. Menceritakan flashback kehidupan dia full of bad luck and living in poverty. Hampir di setiap paragraf ngerasa banyak related sama kehidupan kazu, pas bagian how he feel after he only son died young 😭😭😭. Mungkin bagi sebagian orang buku ini akan kelihatan membosankan karena narasi nya sedikit mendayu.
Seperti kata mas Eka di jurnalnya, ' I could adapt to any kind of work; it was life itself that I could not adjust to. The pain of life, the sadness . . . and the joy . . .' (less)
Sep 28, 2020Rachel rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: netgalley, east-asia, 2020, in-translation, wit
Tokyo Ueno Station is a short, sparse book which follows the life of Kazu, born in 1933, the same year as the Emperor. Kazu's life (mostly characterized by tragedy and poverty) is thematically entwined with the Emperor's through a series of coincidences that tie their families together - and it's also closely connected to Ueno Park, a historically significant site in Tokyo that Kazu's spirit now haunts after his death.
This is a mournful, elegant book that ultimately didn't leave much of an impression on me. In fact, I'm struggling to write this review because I finished this a few days ago and it's already slipped from my mind almost entirely. I don't know what it was, because I didn't find a single thing about this book to be overtly objectionable; it just didn't fully come together for me. I think the fragmented, vignette-style structure paired with its incredibly short length left me wanting more.
Also - in some ways this comparison seems absurd but I also can't get it out of my head - this reminded me so much of When All Is Said by Anne Griffin (a book I really didn't care for), which follows an elderly Irish man looking back on his life and the people who shaped him the most. In both cases I felt like I was being spoon-fed these tragic stories on a very surface level without organically feeling any of it. I do think Tokyo Ueno Station is the more accomplished book, but I guess 'old men mournfully looking back on their sad lives-lit' is not for me?
Thank you to Netgalley and Riverhead for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review. (less)
This is a mournful, elegant book that ultimately didn't leave much of an impression on me. In fact, I'm struggling to write this review because I finished this a few days ago and it's already slipped from my mind almost entirely. I don't know what it was, because I didn't find a single thing about this book to be overtly objectionable; it just didn't fully come together for me. I think the fragmented, vignette-style structure paired with its incredibly short length left me wanting more.
Also - in some ways this comparison seems absurd but I also can't get it out of my head - this reminded me so much of When All Is Said by Anne Griffin (a book I really didn't care for), which follows an elderly Irish man looking back on his life and the people who shaped him the most. In both cases I felt like I was being spoon-fed these tragic stories on a very surface level without organically feeling any of it. I do think Tokyo Ueno Station is the more accomplished book, but I guess 'old men mournfully looking back on their sad lives-lit' is not for me?
Thank you to Netgalley and Riverhead for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review. (less)
Although one can tire of translated Japanese books that dwell in pathos, we welcomed this story because of its point of view: that of a homeless person. "Tokyo: Ueno Station" is the life story of Kazu, who after a life of hard work and living away from his wife and two children, becomes homeless at an advanced age and ends up living in Ueno Park in a tent city. He lives in a cardboard structure with a blue tarp on top that he is required to disassemble before important events—such as when the Emperor and Empress visit the surrounding galleries or museums—and then can put back up again after the event. We learn many things about this group of permanent yet temporary residents of the park, a population that at one point reached over 500 inhabitants. We learn that during typhoons and the aforementioned park clean-ups, that the homeless head to the library, a public bath, a capsule hotel or a porno theater for the day. The saddest moment in the story is when, on a rainy day when he is soaked to the bone and shivering from the cold, Kazu relates that he was so miserable, he forgot that he was ever part of a family. Kazu recollects times of war, the Emperor, the Olympics (he was a construction worker for the 1964 Tokyo Games) and natural disasters as well as telling the intriguing history of Ueno Park, its monuments and the surrounding neighborhood. Many living in Japan will remember some of the newsworthy events (Imperial visits, Olympic bids and park clean-ups) which were also covered in the local media. But now we can gain a sense of how these events affect these marginalized residents of Japan. This is an important book because of its point of view. (less)
Sep 27, 2020A.K. Kulshreshth rated it it was amazing
I listened to the audio book from my library in Singapore. I am very used to the format, but I found myself having to rewind very often, because I got sidetracked thinking about something in the story.
I am glad I had put this in my "Want to Read" list a while back, and got to listening without reading the back cover text. A most interesting thing about the narrator (view spoiler) became clear to me a bit late in the book, and I loved that. I had to rewind again to make sure I got that right.
The work shines in its very plain and telling depiction of poverty and the underbelly of the Japanese economic miracle. This was my introduction to Yu Miri. When I read a bit about her, and it made sense that that she would say that “I felt there was no place for me in the real world" (see this Japan Times article).
Given that she brings in the Japanese royal family and its worship in Japanese society into the narrative, it is not surprising that the author has received threats from the Japanese right wing. (less)
I am glad I had put this in my "Want to Read" list a while back, and got to listening without reading the back cover text. A most interesting thing about the narrator (view spoiler) became clear to me a bit late in the book, and I loved that. I had to rewind again to make sure I got that right.
The work shines in its very plain and telling depiction of poverty and the underbelly of the Japanese economic miracle. This was my introduction to Yu Miri. When I read a bit about her, and it made sense that that she would say that “I felt there was no place for me in the real world" (see this Japan Times article).
Given that she brings in the Japanese royal family and its worship in Japanese society into the narrative, it is not surprising that the author has received threats from the Japanese right wing. (less)
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