Confessions of Love, by Uno Chiyo

There was something cultural going on with this book, something not quite right for my American sensibilities. The protagonist did nothing. That’s right: nothing. He was some kind of artist, it was clear, with some kind of fame, but I never saw him do any work. He was some kind of lover, I think, starting and stopping several relationships with several girls through the course of the book, but I never saw why. He was some kind of “sensitive new age guy,” I suspect, because he definitely had feelings—he shifted from rage to despair (suicide attempt included!) to passion to simple ennui—but I never understood why. He was like my slacker roommate from my sophomore year of college: presumably, he had a life, and friends, and real thoughts, and presumably he was supposed to mean something, but I, for the life of me, couldn’t figure it out.

I’m deciding to blame it on culture. There was something particularly Japanese about all this, I think—the way both despair and elation are glossed as inappropriate; the quiet acceptance of the demands of others, even when those demands are marriage (!), and, most of all, the notion of suicide as the best solution. I plowed my way through most of this book struggling to “get it”—why is this on the list of Japanese classics again? Is it just because the author was scandalous?—but finally threw up my hands in defeat when I read this line: “dying was the most natural step for us to take.” Was it really? I wasn’t even sure what their problem was.

(I’m kidding. I know exactly what their problem was. The protagonist was in love with one woman, but married to another. He met his beloved while searching for another woman he had slept with, and while in the process of divorcing; after getting divorced he married another woman, I’m not quite sure why. Because she was there? Because she was dying? That sounds like a Lifetime channel movie, but it’s true. Anyway, while his wife ran off with an old school friend, he chased her down and then left her abruptly to pursue this new love, who was really a former love returned, and after hanging out in his apartment for a while they decided to commit suicide. Are you confused yet? Now you see what I mean.)

I won’t give away the ending—that seems to be standard in the review business; not that it would make a difference with an ending as limp as this one—but, let’s just say, it was still weird and utterly foreign. Either that, or this was just a bad book. Take your pick.

(You can also find a better review here.)