Orokamono「愚か者」、by Kurumatani Chōkitsu 車谷長吉
When a friend of mine recommended the works of this writer to me, I understood from the description that it must be something pretty special, but I wasn’t expecting this!
It is a collection of short-stories, some of them are hardly two pages long. The language is also not very difficult - some of the stories are even written from the point of view of a 4th grader, which means they’re mainly in hiragana. But they are so strange! By this I mean a very different kind of strangeness than my usual readings of mystery and yōkai novels.
There is this story, for instance, in which a man and a woman are on a train, admiring the lanscape, and at one moment they realize that the traveller on the seat in front of them is a fox. So they say hello and go on admiring the landscape.
Or another one, in which a man catches a snake in his bathroom, and while on his way to get rid of it, he remembers that he is teaching philosophy at the university, but now he’s walking around with a snake in his hands.
In fact, it turns out that the “plot” of these stories, although not completely meaningless, is more or less irrelevant, but the style in which they are written makes them a pretty unique reading experience. Some of the ones that I found especially interesting are 「白骨の男」、「恐山」、「母の髪を吸うた松の木の物語」or「桃の木の話」, and the best thing about these stories is that, unlike novels, they can be read randomly.
If you ever have the opportunity to read something by Kurumatani Chōkitsu, I would really like to hear your opinion on his stories, because he left me very impressed.
It is a collection of short-stories, some of them are hardly two pages long. The language is also not very difficult - some of the stories are even written from the point of view of a 4th grader, which means they’re mainly in hiragana. But they are so strange! By this I mean a very different kind of strangeness than my usual readings of mystery and yōkai novels.
There is this story, for instance, in which a man and a woman are on a train, admiring the lanscape, and at one moment they realize that the traveller on the seat in front of them is a fox. So they say hello and go on admiring the landscape.
Or another one, in which a man catches a snake in his bathroom, and while on his way to get rid of it, he remembers that he is teaching philosophy at the university, but now he’s walking around with a snake in his hands.
In fact, it turns out that the “plot” of these stories, although not completely meaningless, is more or less irrelevant, but the style in which they are written makes them a pretty unique reading experience. Some of the ones that I found especially interesting are 「白骨の男」、「恐山」、「母の髪を吸うた松の木の物語」or「桃の木の話」, and the best thing about these stories is that, unlike novels, they can be read randomly.
If you ever have the opportunity to read something by Kurumatani Chōkitsu, I would really like to hear your opinion on his stories, because he left me very impressed.