Floating Clouds - Fumiko Hayashi

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Floating Clouds - Fumiko Hayashi

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1gscottmoore
Modifié : Jan 4, 2009, 5:12 pm

I read the Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories a few years back, while I was vacationing in Japan. One story particularly caught my interest: The Accordion and the Fish Town by Hayashi Fumiko. I looked for more material by her and found only a few brief outlines of her amazing life. She grew up the daughter of street peddlers and had diminished formal education. Nevertheless she haunted libraries reading voraciously.

She was a poet early on and kept a diary from about the age of 18. Worked as a maid, factory worker, salesgirl, waitress, etc. But kept writing. At 24 she submitted a piece of Diary of a Vagabond and published another 24 installments. It was published as a book the next year (1930) and sold a jaw-dropping 600 thousand copies. She used the money to travel through Russia, Europe and England living mostly in Paris in 1932. The saga goes on and on, I'll spare you.

Lane Dunlop translated her Floating Clouds last year and it has been published by Columbia University Press. I think it's a fabulous translation in that it reads as comfortably as one can imagine. None of the periodic fits and starts that some translators provide us.

I love the first part of the book which concentrates on the female protagonist. As we weave through it begins spending much more time in the head of her lover, and the book spends the last part there. It's the story of depressing and miserable people after the conclusion of world war two but it doesn't really provide depressing impetus for the reader. Still the last part of the book bogs down in their endless cycles of hopelessness, aimlessness, and floating cloudness.

I still can't believe that Diary of a Vagabond, as popular as it was, has never been translated in to English. Apparently there is quite a storehouse of her short stories, her basic form it seems, and I'd love to see a big collection of those. Until then I'm stuck hunting scraps here and there.

She's got a great voice.

-- Gerry

2gscottmoore
Déc 25, 2007, 12:47 pm

I'm still trying to ferret out what there is of Hayashi Fumiko and encountered a few books in which some of her short stories are found. One was I Saw a Pale Horse & Selections from Diary of a Vagabond assembled/translated by Janice Brown. But I hate reading excerpts of a book I want and intend to read. So I balked on that one.

Another was was Be a Woman: Hayashi Fumiko and Modern Japanese Women's Literature by Joan E. Ericson. It has a short story, Narcissus, as well as potentially excerpts from Hayashi's Diary of a Vagabond. It seemed like a long way to go for one lousy short story, but I'm an obsessive type. I was hoping it might also touch on the work and life of Fumiko Enchi or Tsuboi Sakae who wrote Twenty-four Eyes. Last week I saw the latter as a movie made in 1954 by Keisuke Kinoshita.

So Be aWoman arrived yesterday and I'm surprised to find the entire 1930 book-edition of Diary of a Vagabond is included inside it! The whole thing. I can't believe it's not in the title of the book, but there you have it.

More news as it comes in.

-- Gerry

3marietherese
Modifié : Déc 27, 2007, 3:47 pm

Thanks for that valuable information, Gerry. I was actually looking at 'Be a Woman' on Amazon earlier this week and pondering whether to add it to my wishlist or not. Now, I definitely shall.

I'm pretty sure you already know this, but in case others are interested, three of Hayashi's essays on literature and writing have been translated in Susanna Fessler's study of Hayashi, 'Wandering Heart: the Work and Method of Hayashi Fumiko' (no touchstone, but one copy is listed here on Library Thing).

4gscottmoore
Déc 29, 2007, 4:09 pm

Thanks for the info on Wandering Heart: The Work and Method of Hayashi Fumiko. I just one-clicked it at Amazon. At ten cents (plus the obligatory shipping gouge), how bad could it be?

I've now received these short stories: "Borneo Diamond" from Autumn Wind and Other Stories, and "A Late Chrysanthemum" from a collection of the same name. Lane Dunlop's handiwork, both. Incidentally Ms. Hayashi notwithstanding, these are otherwise really excellent collections.

To complete my meager list, Ivan Morris's Modern Japanese Stories includes her "Downtown" while Donald Keene's Modern Japanese Literature includes "Tokyo".

I'm about half-way through "Diary of a Vagabond" and it's really a gem. It has that exuberance of a youthful artist that you find in Knut Hamsun and Henry Miller's early stuff. Just bursting with life despite the incidental misery of day-to-day navigation.

-- Gerry

5gscottmoore
Modifié : Jan 4, 2009, 5:17 pm

Update for those waiting breathlessly for additional news:

I think "Diary of a Vagabond" included in "Be a Woman" is just fantastic. It has such vitality, exuberance, and apparent naiveté isn't to be confused for gullibility. A person living in pretty miserable circumstances still looking forward to a tomorrow when everything will turn around. This, I'm told, was one of the things that produced a loyal following during 30's and 40's.

I read "Last Chrysanthemum" and have managed to procure a dusty video-tape of the movie by Mizoguchi, so am looking forward to that. I liked the story a lot, but like "Downtown" in another collection even better.

She wrote some good stuff. I've received "Work and Methods of..." but am somewhat disappointed it has just a few very short essays. I'll find some value, undoubtedly in reading about her writing and approach with the requisite biographical aspects, as I do "Kafu the Scribbler" by Seidensticker. But it is somewhat irksome that so very much of her work is unavailable. She has remained a consistent seller for the past 50 years in Japan, I'm told. It would only seem logical, particularly in times informed by feminism, to have a substantial collected works, if only her short stories, available.

And so forth. More when I'm completely finished with it all, which shouldn't take too much longer.

-- Gerry

6gscottmoore
Jan 14, 2008, 5:26 pm

Okay, I've finished with all these. With the exception of the last part of Floating Clouds, I've enjoyed all of her work quite a bit. She can really summon a full and complete character. Particularly women.

She's a wonderful and sadly overlooked writer from Japan. I wish someboyd would set that straight. Now I'm on to the many other writers whom, when mentioned, summon nothing but blank stares from my literary friends.

-- Gerry