The Changeling Book

"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:


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.'"