Strangers

A Japanese Ghost Story that will Haunt you...

One of the things I love about the Japanese Literature I've discovered this year is its ability to weave the present day with the spirits of the past so matter of fact. Spirits are accepted as existing. Strangers by Taichi Yamada is such a story. It's a ghost story, but more than that. There is an underlying layer that makes this a much more complex story, one that will have you questioning your own heart...

Imagine meeting your parents when they are a young married couple... The exact age they were the last time you saw them... That is what happens to our main character, Harada, who is 47, recently divorced and pretty jaded. His parents were killed in an automobile accident when he was 12, show more and he was raised by his grandfather. One night he is compelled to visit the part of Tokyo where he grew up. He visits a theatre there, where he meets a man that looks exactly like his long-dead father... He can't believe his eyes, but he is compelled and soon obsessed to find out who this man is... How could you not be curious? And then as Harada is invited to the man's home and meets his wife, who just so happens to look just like his dead mother, how can you not be compelled to stay... even if you know none of this can be real. Or is real?

Taichi Tamada's prose is sparse but moving. He slowly builds the story around Harada, painting the story with a lost love & his divorce, new love, a demanding job, a son who has distanced himself from his father Harada after his parents divorce, and a strange building where Harada lives now. But it also is a story about the love one has for ones parents. As Harada deals with life as we all know it, there is this other surreal world that is wrapping itself around him, pulling him away from everything else. But how can Harada resist the love of his parents that he was cheated from as a small boy... The story is simply wonderful, with unexpected twists and turns that bring the story to a wonderful ending. It will haunt you after the last page...

I read this book is part of my Japanese Literature Challenge, which ends at the end of this month. I really enjoyed this book! What looked to be a simple story was not, and because of that it kept me turning the pages. Not to mention that Taichi Yamada writes well. It's a great introduction to Japanese Literature if you haven't read any yet, and at only 203 pages it's a reasonable time investment! show less

I suddenly had this feeling that I did not want to meet the man's wife. To meet her would be to instantly obliterate the glorious time I was having because of the man's uncanny likeness to my father; I would have to come crashing back to reality. No, wait. That wasn't it. Or at least that wasn't all. A part of me was actually entertaining a secret hope, experiencing a secret terror. It couldn't be, could it? Surely it couldn't be.

A ghost story set in present-day Tokyo. Middle-aged television scriptwriter Harada has become dislocated from his friends and family since leaving his wife and is living a solitary existence in the apartment he used to use as an office. But things take a strange turn when he takes a trip to the area he grew up show more in and meets a man who looks exactly like his father. But Harada was 12 when his father died and this man is younger than Harada is now, so is he a ghost or could the resemblance just be coincidental? show less

You know those fascinating, atmospheric, character-based Japanese horror films that Hollywood have a habit of getting hold of only to mangle and gloss and slurry in the remake? Taichi Yamada's Strangers has much in common with those films, only being a novel it's obviously even better. After his divorce, 40-something TV writer Harada lives in what was once his office. Most of the rest of the building is also made up of offices, there appears to be only one other actual resident, making the nights lonely and quiet. On a journey to downtown Tokyo, Harada meets the ghosts of his long-dead parents, who appear to be alive and well and exactly the same age they were when they died (younger than him). He becomes obsessed with visiting his show more parents, but his sole neighbour, Kei, worries that so much time spent in the company of the dead is having a negative effect on Harada's health.

Read the full review at my blog. show less

Orphan Harada is in his mid-forties, divorced and lonely. A scriptwriter for a faceless production company, he lives in an empty Tokyo apartment tower, with one other resident. By day the road is hot and busy, with corporate tenants – by night Harada and Kei, a girl with a secret, occupy the building. Harada decides on a whim to visit his home suburb of Tokyo. It is there he sees what seems to be his father but looking the age of his death thirty-five years before. His father takes him to his old home, where he meets his mother, in identical shape. Totally original storyline, touching on grief, the power of mind over matter, and of love. Complete with a horrific twist.

This was first time reading Taichi Yamada. This book struck me as very similar to Tomoyuki Hoshino's ME. Both authors are riffing off Haruki Murakami's brand of magical realism, but lack the startling charm of the pop phenom enfante terrible.

Yamada's prose is readable, depicting the main character's thoughts transparently. The main character writes for television. Yamada himself wrote for television. The book reads like a television script in some ways. This led to the same dilemma Hoshino's book had, as well as Seicho Matsumoto's Pro Bono. They keep recapping at the beginning of each chapter, as if the reader can't be trusted to remember what happened twenty pages ago. In a sense it's just dumbed-down crime fiction. But is rather bland show more in terms plot, character motivations, twists, humor and suspense.

There was very little to absorb me in this book except for the laid-back air, the cozy mystery at the heart of the novel, which, if you read the product description, lays it out for you plainly. It's meant to be a quick read, demanding little thought. A disposable conceit, and is completely unconvincing in my opinion.

If you've finished all of Japanese crime fiction's best examples, you might give this a try. Comparing this to Shuichi Yoshida's two English translations, Yamada looks like a joke. If I am to believe the author bio, he's attained celebrity status in his home country. Perhaps it's an acquired taste, like Matsumoto. That's why I plan to at least try his other novels. show less

Not a bad little ghost story, and one that held my interest, but it’s nothing remarkable either. There are scenes that will undoubtedly be powerful to anyone who lost a parent as a child. Unfortunately the writing is a bit clumsy, repetitive, and amateurish. It’s a gentle sort of supernatural tale, not one with outright horror, which I liked, and it has a nice plot twist, but there is not enough depth here to recommend without reservations. It may be a good, simple read while on holiday though.

Japanese ghost stories. Not a genre that I have much knowledge of.

The quote by Brett Easton Ellis on the cover almost made me put it back on the shelf, but the review on the back cover promising a cross between 'Paul Auster at his best' and 'a very Japanese ghost story' swung it.

Yamada's fictional Tokyo has many similarities with Paul Auster's New York – the eery surreality of the setting and the self-contained absorption and focus of the central character could have come straight out of one of his early novels.

The ghostly elements of the story aren't particularly scary or shocking or surprising, but the grief and longing of the characters is beautifully rendered and there is a psychological depth to them that is surprisingly show more moving.

The American translation can be a bit annoying in places, but for the most part it is unobtrusive and the spooky detachment of the writing is allowed to take hold. I found myself swept along by the story, enjoying the weirdness and content to follow wherever it took me.

It reminded me of The Sixth Sense in some ways, and anyone looking for a bit of left-field fiction that keeps challenging you all the way through should find plenty to enjoy here. show less