カテゴリー: Fiction Japanese

★★★★☆ He made a siple mistake, but now just because of his male pride, his life gets worse and worse. Tough people survive, a classic Seicho Matsumoto.

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Pro Bono
Seicho Matsumoto, 1961
286 pages
Read in 2020.02

🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

I was attracted to the Italian title of this book "La ragazza del Kyushu", a girl from Kyushu - just like me she's from Kyushu but her revenge is something a lot more unique.

A girl from Kyushu goes to Tokyo to meet a popular lawyer to prove her brother's innocence, but he turned down because she didn't have money.
Now that might have been rather common, but upon her brother's  death in prison, she decides to go very far to perfect her revenge.

A classic Matsumoto, the author doesn't go in details about anything other than her obsession and revenge, because nothing else matters, it's all about her madness.

Oh and the lawyer, he should have realised earlier, his little mistakes accumulate and he's too proud, he's now completely trapped.

Bad people get punished by the society, and tough people survive, they are the classic characters from Seicho Matsumoto.

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🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Pro Bono

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Pro Bono

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La ragazza del Kyushu (italiano)

★★★★★ A group of strangers joins a tour to India, to Benares, a sacred place, a place of death. It asks the question, what is a religion, what is a life itself? They face Mother Ganga who embraces all deaths and lives, of all people. A masterpiece.

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Deep River
Shusaku Endo, 1993
Read in 2020.02


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

Endo Shusaku is now even more known for his more clearly religious book, Silence, since Scorsese directed the movie.

This is a story about a group of strangers who joined a same packaged tour to visit temples in India.
They all had regrets and disappointments in life, with fragile hope in their hearts, they head towards Ganges River.

Benares, Varanasi, is a sacred place, a place of death.
There they face their inner selves and the extreme poverty in a boy who trust absolute power of gods.
It asks the question, what is a religion, what is a death or a life itself?
There they face Mother Ganga who embraces all deaths and lives, of all people.

Endo, a Catholic, was 70 years old when it was written, it was a way for him to look back at his own life to once again ponder his eternal question “what does it mean to be a Japanese and a Christian”
A masterpiece.

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Deep River

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Deep River: Shusaku Endo (Pushkin Press Classics) 

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●

★★★★★ Christianity and evil. It’s the evil that overflows out of the moral of White Man, of Christianity in which you believe in the one absolute God, or not. / A resignation from good or bad, believe or not-believe, it’s the lightness of living without a sin.


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White Man, Yellow Man
Shusaku Endo, 1955
Read in 2020.01


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

Christianity and evil.

White Man
The protagonist understands his ugliness, and he fantasises his superiority because of it.
Evil is universal, it’s political but above all it’s so powerful that you can destroy the others.
Crushing his friend means crushing all hypocrites, and violating this girl means violating all virgins.
It’s the evil that overflows out of the moral of White Man, the moral that’s cultivated in Christianity where you believe in the one absolute God.
It’s whether you tolerate it, or you reject to tolerate the absolute good and become evil itself.

Yellow Man
In a way this is harsher.
It’s close to the author’s personal yet eternal struggle of “Being a Christian even if I am Japanese”
During the war, a Christian Japanese young man was exhausted.
Us yellow people actually do not truly believe the God you white people fear.
Us yellow people actually do not have Original sin like you, any way Mother Mary is not in this country.

An ex-priest who betrayed his God finally realises that the truth is in the tired eyes of the yellow people.
They don’t fear death or life, they have no sins, they don’t believe in the God, his absoluteness, and in this country even the criminals are saved as they are.
Can we, the men with white hands, come close to these yellow people?
It’s a liberation or rather resignation from good or bad, believe or not-believe, it’s the lightness of living without a sin.

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

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White Man, Yellow Man: Two Novellas

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White Man, Yellow Man: Two Novellas

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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