Bungou Stray Cats

Online library of Japanese literature, quotes, and random aesthetic things

[straycalico]

Everyone's looking for something, for someone. The way they do, though, is a little different.

Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls

Art by Junichiro Sekino

[straycalico]

The world was, day by day, becoming a more convenient, and unromantic, place.

Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls

Art by Ikezumi Kiyoshi

[straycalico]

From my own experience, I'd say the important things in life usually happen unexpectedly. And dying would, I think, count.

Mr. Koyasu in The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami

Art by Junichiro Sekino

[straycalico]

My father is the most fatalistic person I have ever known. He once admitted that he had not felt a day of peace in his marriage and expressed his regret that he had never thought of protecting my sister and me from our mother, who is a family despot, unpredictable in both her callousness and her vulnerability.

But the truth is, he tried to instill this fatalism in us because it was our only protection. For years I have been hiding behind that: being addicted to fatalism can make one look calm, capable, even happy.

Yiyun Li, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

Art by Naoko Matsubara

[straycalico]

A journalist in China told me that most writers believe in their historical responsibility toward our time. Why can't you live up to that expectation? they ask, and my reply, if I were to give one, is this: I have spent much of my life turning away from the scripts given to me, in China and in America; my refusal to be defined by the will of others is my one and only political statement.

Yiyun Li, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

Art by Naoko Matsubara

[straycalico]

Life is most difficult for those who know what they want and also know what makes it impossible for them to get what they want. Life is still difficult, but less so, for those who know what they want but have not yet realized that they will never get it. It is the least difficult for people who do not know what they want.

Yiyun Li, The Book of Goose

Art by Yue

[straycalico]

For years I have held the belief that all my questions will be answered by the books I am reading. Books, however, lead only to other books.

Yiyun Li, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

Art by Kawase Hasui

[straycalico]

My idea of literature is something more spontaneous, more cohesive, something with a kind of natural, positive vitality. For me, writing a novel is like climbing a steep mountain, struggling up the face of the cliff, reaching the summit after a long and arduous ordeal. You overcome your limitations, or you don't, one or the other. I always keep that inner image with me as I write.

Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Art by Osamu Sugiyama

[straycalico]

In my chair, I surrendered myself to a world of sound that could only be described as sparkling. It made my head sway, and my breath grew deeper as my legs climbed up that evanescent staircase, each step a sheet of light. They would shimmer to life the second my sole made contact, then fizzle into stardust when I lifted my foot, only to be reborn as yet another step, gently showing me the way. That slowly winding spiral stairway of light ascended freely through the dark, and though I was unsure where it was taking me, or what I would find when I arrived, as long as the music was playing, I knew that there was nothing to fear, that I could go anywhere at all.

Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

Art by Xuan Loc Xuan

[straycalico]

I'm all alone, I thought. I'd been on my own for ages, and I was convinced that there was no way I could be any more alone, but now I'd finally realized how alone I truly was. Despite the crowds of people, and all the different places, and a limitless supply of sounds and colors packed together, there was nothing here that I could reach out and touch. Nothing that would call my name. There never had been, and there never would be. And that would never change, no matter where I went in the world. Surrounded by the grayness of the city, ever grayer in the misty rain, I was unable to move.

Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

Art by Xuan Loc Xuan

[straycalico]

They're all so sure they're the ones who have seen the light, and it's the only identity they've got, so they can't keep their mouths shut. They're always so loud about it, too, like they need you to see how happy they are. And they walk away feeling great about themselves, because they were generous enough to share the secret to their happiness with everybody. Anyway, they just want to feel superior. It's like some superficial celebrity complex, you know?

Hijiri, from All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami

Art by Okiie Hashimoto

[straycalico]

I discovered an arcane expression, "Mikabo no sanzokuame," which uses the same characters as "Mitsutsuka" but in this case pronounces them "sanzoku." The phrase refers to a kind of sudden shower. Evidently there is a Mt. Mikabo in Gunma, and when a thunderhead appears over the peaks, you'll be drenched before you can gather three sheafs ("sanzoku") of wheat. Sanzoku-ame, I said to myself. I could see it now. The sky goes dark over the mountain, closing in, and there's a crash of thunder, followed by a vicious rain that drenches the earth with a sound like every sheet of paper in the world being torn.

Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

Art by Hajime Namiki

I started this book a while ago but never finished it, so this time I went back and read it all the way through! This book gave me a newfound respect for Mieko Kawakami and her novels. The main character, in spite of her weaknesses and frustrations, tenaciously presses on. Even as she learns to refuse to let others silence her, and to take risks in pursuit of her true desires, she is nonetheless vulnerable and in need of understanding. The themes of living with loneliness and taking responsibility for our own choices really resonated with me 🍁

A PDF of this book is linked above in the title. It's also available at https://straycalico.tumblr.com/online_library :)

[straycalico]

Seeing his father and Fumiko's mother in the bowls, Kikuji felt that they had raised two beautiful ghosts and placed them side by side. The tea bowls were here, present, and the present reality of Kikuji and Fumiko, facing across the bowls, seemed immaculate too.

Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes

Art by Kiyoshi Saito

[straycalico]

"The dead are our property, in a way. We must take care of them," said Kikuji. "But they all died in such a hurry."

Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes

Art by Masao Ido

[straycalico]

When you're held by the dead, you begin to feel that you aren't in this world yourself.

Kikuji, from Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata

Art by Masao Ido

[straycalico]

In a gourd that had been handed down for three centuries, a flower that would fade in a morning... [T]here was something unsettling in the idea of a cut morning glory.

Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes

Art by Kazuyuki Ohtsu

[straycalico]

The nameless workers, so diligent while they lived, had presently died, and only the Chijimi* remained, the plaything of men like Shimamura, cool and fresh against the skin in the summer. This rather unremarkable thought struck him as most remarkable. The labor into which a heart has poured its whole love—where will it have its say, to excite and inspire, and when? 

Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country

Art by Shiro Kasamatsu

*Chijimi, or Ojiya-chijimi, is a kind of cloth, painstakingly handwoven, that requires bleaching by being stretched out on the snow. In the novel, the narrator reflects on the work of the women who devoted themselves to weaving Chijimi in the winter months, when heavy snowfall left entire communities snowbound.