My brief review of Kenji Nakagami’s noir masterpiece
[Parts of this review were first published in an edition of Kansai Scene in 2002.]
Kenji Nakagami is a writer whose work opens up a side of Japan usually well-hidden from the foreign eye. And for that matter, from many other Japanese people.
He once said that his gutsy, earthy style “pisses on language” in order to make it it new again. His work presents Japanese lives in a world apart from the typical ‘cultural’ fare of colourful festivals or ‘exotic’ temples.
In his writings about the burakumin class he often wades into the darker aspects of human nature. The Cape is possibly his most dramatic story and in it there are striking passages where he explores the dull, animalistic mind of a simpleton. There is little in literature that does this in such a penetrating way.
Major credit must be given also to the brilliant and subtle translation work of Eve Zimmerman, who has made the gruff grunts and mumbles of Nakagami’s characters comprehensible to the non-Japanese reader.
For a more detailed look at the burakumin people, see my original article: “Japan’s untouchables” here:
Brett Hetherington 