The North Light

I have read 'The North Light' by Hideo Yokoyama for a book club this week at The House of Books and Friends and may pop back and edit if I find people there add something to my appreciation of the book. It is the story of Aose, an architect, who has designed a famous house, but who feels a bit stuck in his life, generally dissatisfied and unfulfilled. He is divorced and has a haphazard relationship with his daughter, seeming to spend time in coffee shops with her once a month. At work he seems to be doing mundane projects, just glad to have a job, after the much referenced economic bubble burst. When a new client asks him to reproduce his famous design for them he finds himself drawn back into the lives of his former clients, who appear to have left the famous Y residence unoccupied, apart from a single chair facing the north light window. 

Alongside his search for his elusive clients there is his relationship with his boss Okajima (usefully a list of dramatis personae is at the front of the book, though I did get accustomed to the Japanese names.) Okajima decides to enter a 'competition' to design a memorial gallery for a famous artist who has died, and this becomes a major subplot that introduces a lot of information about architecture. It was interesting because it's not often that the working life of the characters plays a significant part in a story. I have read so many novels about writers, or people with undefined occupations, or are in some kind of break from their normal working life. I guess it's because most people's jobs are quite boring. It wouldn't make much of a story to write about being a postie.

So Haruko Fujimiya, the dead painter is invented, but Bruno Taut, the designer of the chair, is a real German architect; I just love it when books have real people in them. Taut escaped Nazi Germany and spent a couple of years in Japan before the war, writing extensively about Japanese design and became very influential on modernist architecture. He only completed one project while he lived there but did teach and design and sell furniture. So the presence of the chair at the Y residence becomes some kind of symbol of his influence, but it is also linked to Aose's own story. 

The story is full of questions; who were the people, and why had they built a house and not moved in? and why did it now seem as if they had disappeared from the face of the planet? As Aose is forced to try and make sense of it, he is also forced to step outside his mundane concerns and think about who he is, why he is so perturbed by the house standing empty, and why he never built the house that he and his wife Yukari talked about. 

I have read quite a few Japanese books in the last year or so, and talking to Monkey sensei about life in Japan, I feel I am learning something about Japanese society and the cultural differences, which sometimes feel significant, and at other times remind you that the human experience is universal. It is about the yearning for connection, particularly in his relationship with his daughter. And I loved the description of the house, and its environment, and I found myself longing for the tranquility that it evoked.

I only noted one quote. In it Aose is travelling to visit the Y residence and on hearing a familiar birdsong is transported back to his childhood (an itinerant one with a father who worked in dam building):

"Tsu-tsu-pi, tsu-pi, tsu-pi ...
He couldn't see it, but it was probably a coal tit. The great tit had a similar call, but the tempo was faster and it sounded more like 'teacher, teacher, teacher'.
As he moved off again, he lowered the driver's side window slightly. The chill air caressed his cheek. He could hear more birdsong coming from a forest of silver birch trees. A winter bird, the Eurasian siskin. They stayed up there in the countryside until late spring, but their migration season was fast approaching. The call was higher pitched than usual, more urgent sounding, as if the bird was anxious to get on its way.
Aose felt his mind being hijacked by memories of birds and their songs. It was different from nostalgia. It overlapped with Aose's own family's pattern of migration. On his way to and from school, the chorus of birdsong overheard had been like rain falling, sometimes a comforting mist, sometimes pelting him with its malicious chant, 'Damn Kids! Damn Kids!' As he approached the temporary accommodation, the voices would fade away into the distance. As they neared completion, the giant dams that now loomed above the mountains had already swallowed up the woods and forests that had been sanctuaries for all kinds of wild birds." (p.56)

Stay safe. Be kind. Read some translation.