Mieko Kanai

When the quotidian — the items on a grocery store shelf, the flowing of water from a tap, even the exchanges between a husband and wife — begins to prompt a mild vertigo, it’s probably a sign that something is off. But what exactly? Natsumi is a housewife with two young boys. She and her husband get on reasonably well despite the odd irritation. But is she flourishing? Is she in any way living a fulfilled life? She might not directly ask herself those questions, but the moments when show more she sort of drifts off and loses her sense of herself suggest an answer. An answer perhaps to the question of whether her life is all it might be, but not, sadly, how to transform it from whatever it is at the moment into something more satisfying.

This is such interesting, subtle, writing. Natsumi’s anxiety seeps over to the reader, who might themselves experience a mild vertigo as she squints to ground her vision. But what is the purpose of propagating unease of this kind? There is no resolution. Not for Natsumi. It’s not even clear that there could be. Is that, ultimately, the negative realization that the author desires? I don’t know.

Recommended for the existentialist you’ve forgotten you always were. show less

Oh, Tama! took me a while to read, even though I really enjoyed it. It's not that it's difficult or anything, it's just that it's sort of slow and contemplative without a lot of urgency to it. I would pick it up and read a little bit, and thoroughly love that bit, then find that when I walked away, I didn't really have a feeling of Must Finish ASAP, even as I kept it in my thoughts and looked forward to picking it up again.

That might be a good or bad thing for other readers, but for me - show more sometimes a quiet slice-of-life story that meanders along is exactly what I'm in the mood for, and I enjoyed this one.

I liked the narrator, Natsuyuki, quite a bit. He's an interesting guy who can't exactly be trusted - he takes pains to avoid bothersome things when possible (or so he claims), and has a rather haphazard, lackadaisical way of narrating the story, as though it's all a bit too much effort sometimes.

The story itself is about Tama, a pregnant cat foisted upon him by the brother of a woman he slept with once. Or maybe it isn't really about Tama, but she's the linchpin that pulls it all together - explorations of motherhood and family, about sex and relationships and desire. There's also an element of obligation - of what one owes to others for one reason or another.

I'm not sure I'm the best reviewer for Oh, Tama!, but I liked it a lot. The language and imagery are strongly evocative, and I love Natsuyuki's narration - he is a vivid character at least in part because of his contradictions. show less

It is dangerous to surmise from my experience of reading only a handful of Japanese modern novels, but ‘Oh Tama’ shares traits I have seen in other recent reads by Japanese authors: dislocation, dysfunction and the strangeness of everyday urban life. At the centre of the book are a number of dysfunctional characters, with broken families, temporary homes, random connections, and a strangely dislocated loose network of friendships. Their lives are mundane, haphazard and belie stereotypes show more about the conventional, office-tied, conformist Japanese salaryman. This is a book that explores the pattern of everyday incident, nothingness and the significance of lives lived through small happenings, or non-happenings. Our hero Natsuyuki spends a long time contemplating, and not writing, an article on a photographer, who is in turn a fiction of the author’s making. One of the central drivers of plot (such as there is), Tsuneko, who links many of the characters together, never appears. Are some elements ‘real’ or flights of fancy from the characters? It is a novel that made me think about the nature of everyday life, and what our expectations are, and should be. show less

This offbeat, quirky little novel from Mieko Kanai is certainly one to enjoy, especially for fans of Japanese literature. Indeed, those who are familiar with some of the great ‘cat’ literature of the 20th century, or anyone who has read a lot of Japanese authors, will recognise the style and themes of the book which, superficially, can be quite hard to completely get a grasp of for the uninitiated.

Natsuyuki Kanemitsu, a freelance photographer, lives a quiet enough life but it is soon show more interrupted by the arrival of his friend Alexandre (real name Kanemitsu) who announces that his sister Tsuneko is pregnant and that there are several possible fathers – one of whom, perhaps, is Natsuyuki himself. Alexandre also brings with him the eponymous hero of our tale, the heavily-pregnant Tama, and leaves the cat with Natsuyuki. And that’s pretty much it, plot-wise. There appears another character called Fuyuhiko, a friend of Alexandre’s who, as it happens, is Natsuyuki’s half-brother, and who may also be the father of Tsuneko’s child. As is the case in much of the Japanese literature I have read, the pace is slow, the main focus is on dialogue and scene-setting, on the quiet unravelling of themes and ideas which, in the case of ‘Oh, Tama!’, rely a lot on coincidence. There is much discussion and reference to literature and film, art theory and fashion, and always in the background is Tama, having had her kittens and caring for them in Natsuyuki’s wardrobe, watching from the side-lines at the eccentricities of the human race!

Without over-playing the parallels, there is obviously the comparison between Tsuneko and Tama, between the human and the animal world and our attitude to sex and relationships. There is a lot of humour and almost farcical plot developments as all of the characters arrive at and leave Natsuyuki’s small apartment. It is a little gem of a book that will stand up to multiple re-readings to tease out the subtlety of the writing. If you are looking for a fast-paced page-turner, a thrill a minute ride, then this is not for you. If you are looking for a quiet, eccentric little book and have a penchant for Japan and Japanese literature, then this should definitely be on your reading list. show less