BLOSSOMS FROM JAPAN
In this collection by the late Kuniko Mukoda we begin to reflect on uncertainties and insecurities that mar trust and alter the course of people's relationships.
There’s a quality to Mukoda’s stories that is somewhat hard to convey to readers. Kuniko Mukōda was a Japanese television screenwriter who died in a plane crash at 51 years of age. Hers was clearly a short life, yet she was celebrated for her writings about day-to-day family life and relationships. In 1980, she won the 83rd Naoki Prize for her short stories "Hanano Namae", "Kawauso" and "Inugoya.”
Mukōda’s The Name of the Flower is a collection of stories that I bought at Feldman’s Books, a bookstore for used books in Menlo Park, California. Visiting Feldman’s is like stopping at a flea market. You never know what you’ll find, but you sense that what you find on a given day you may never again see in your life. Whenever I see a book in translation at this store I tend to buy it exactly for that reason.
I’ve never been to Japan but in the last two years I’ve read several works by Japanese writers and feel that I have an insight into local life, thanks to translated literature. I’m noticing that there’s a spartan quality to the writings from Japan; the elusiveness inherent to the works I find both confounding and exciting.
“So what exactly happened there?” is a question I found myself asking at the end of the stories I read in this week’s pick. The endings were often abrupt and unresolved, and yet the stories were captivating and funny at the most unexpected moments. With each one I realized how unpredictable human beings were and how their private insecurities and obsessions played out publicly in the strangest of ways at the oddest of times.
While reading this work, I was reminded of the movie made from a famous novel by Tamil author and screenwriter Jayakantan from 1970 called Sila Nerangalil Sila Manithargal whose title translates approximately to “Some people at some moments.” While I’ve forgotten the storyline itself, the title has stayed with me forever because it describes the vagaries of human character. For reasons that we can never ascribe to the people we think we know so well, they may behave in the strangest ways at the most unexpected times in our lives. This is yet another ugly facet of the human condition and The Name of the Flower seems to capture these moments of social disorientation particularly well.
The eponymous story in the collection features Matsuo who has been Tsuneko’s husband for over 25 years. It’s not a perfect marriage and yet they have made it work.
We learn that when the two were courting, Matsuo did not know the names of flowers other than cherry blossoms, chrysanthemums and lilies. When they marry, Tsuneko manages to teach him all she knows about flowers and arrangements.
When he and Tsuneko returned from their honeymoon, he found a nearby flower arrangement teacher. Once a week Tsuneko had a lesson, and on those days Matsuo would come straight home from work. He quickly finished his dinner and then had Tsuneko arrange the flowers as she had learned that day. He watched her closely, like a surgeon given a precious opportunity to observe an important operation. “What’s the name of that flower?” he would always ask. Without fail, every night after a flower arrangement lesson, Matsuo’s lovemaking would be rough and brutal. This was the routine for years.
In the fifth year of their marriage, Tsuneko happened by chance to see Matsuo’s notebook. On the days of her lessons, Matsuo had written the names of the flowers he’d learned from her:
March 15: Daffodil (yellow)
March 22: Spirea (white)
Furthermore, at the end of each line, the word “Done” was written and circled.
It took me a second iteration through the story to realize how Matsuo used the fruits of his “refinement” and sophistication to sow many wild oats as a married man just in order to satisfy his strange fantasies.
In another story titled Manhattan, we see adultery again, in a different form. We meet a man who has been spurned by his wife. She has left Mutsuo for another man. The opener of this story is at once poignant and hilarious.
Since his wife left him, Mutsuo had learned many things. Bread, for instance, went stale in three days, and got moldy within a week. A French baguette became a club after a month. A bottle of milk went sour after a week—even in the refrigerator. Ah, refrigerators. One day Mutsuo had found a plastic bag of green water at the bottom of his. He couldn’t recall buying any green ice cream. After wondering exactly what it was, he realized it was the bag of cucumbers his wife, Sugiko, had bought before she left him three months before.
We see Mutsuo sleeping and waking in his sofa for he’s unable to use his bed anymore. Even when’s out walking, he’s reminded of the sordid state of his life. He sees the shop he frequents—a place where he bought croquettes—now being demolished.
There had been no sign that it was to be torn down. Demolitions and remodeling were rather like a cuckolded husband: before one realized it, the affair was far advanced.
This is an eccentric tale but we begin to comprehend how Sugiko may have left her husband for someone else because of his ineptness. People inside a partnership change as their aspirations change, just as shop owners must move on and redefine what they want for themselves. What is at the heart of this story is the truth that it may sometimes be impossible for two people inside a marriage to grow and dream together when both don’t seek to make compromises.
Through the course of this collection we understand the point of it all, that almost all relationships are flawed at some level. Thus every tale in the collection leaves some things unsaid, just as in relationships too.
In a story titled Mr. Carp we see how behavior patterns are observed by the next generation, and also emulated in artful ways. They’re not learned as much as imbibed in secret even as secrets are gleaned. Half-truths are told to protect the family. In the story, a father inducts his son on how to be without really instructing him about how to be. Yet, as we all know only too well, a child can be all-seeing, with a clairvoyance that sometimes jolts a parent. In the story we see how a man’s mistress leaves him a gift that will forever be remembered.
“Someone’s here,” whispered Mayumi, Shiomura’s daughter. “The kitchen door just opened. I’m sure of it.”
“It’s a thief,” Mayumi whispered again, insisting that someone was in the kitchen. “He’s just closed the door and left.”
“You don’t give up, do you, Mayumi?” Shiomura said. “Why not just go and have a look yourself?”
When the family goes out into the living room, they realize that it’s only a fish, after all. What Shiomura recognizes, right away, is the fact that it’s the machination of his ex-lover, the woman called Tsuyoko, who wanted to leave a telltale scent of his life with her. He cannot talk about it, however, and his son, who, we realize later, smells a rat, wishes to keep it and safeguard it and proceeds to buy a whole container to house it. Their life changes with the arrival of the fish fondly called Mr. Carp by the lover. What we realize as the story progresses, is that the fish that bothers Shiomoura so much—for he’s overwrought by guilt, after all—doesn’t move a hair on his wife’s head, suggesting that she had always known. The son makes the fish his pet and in time we know that the son harbors his father’s secret. Mr. Carp becomes the malodorous heirloom of infidelity that is handed down from father to son—always unspoken and undiscussed—even though the stink it leaves in its wake is quite impossible to ignore.
The translation of this collection by Tomone Matsumoto was published in 1994 although the original came out several years prior to that. A book that resonated at the time of its publication may not be that resonant in contemporary Japan. I’ve heard, however, that even in the present times adultery is winked away in Japanese society mostly owing to its obsessive work culture. The very long working hours, the expectation of regular outings with clients and coworkers, and the proliferation of hostess bars render it easy. I’ve heard also that the culture of work is so demanding that men often push themselves to over-achieve and become cocooned by their careers, coming home late most weekdays nights. Invariably, the women are often left with the task of raising their kids which quite naturally alters the balance and alienates the two inside a marriage.