Ghosts is a novel about the quest for a lost childhood, of which only fragments like these remain. Memory is focused like a magnifying glass on these clues to one man's past. Small, commonplace things are thus enhanced, and even simple events--relaxing in a bath, or flying a kite, or being unable to whistle--take on the same kind of aura that more dramatic ones have. In trying to remember, the narrator learns to see the world again with the intensity of a small child's eyes--a gift that readers of Kita's brilliant, longer novel, The House of Nire, will recognize as one that illuminates all his work. And, though in Ghosts the searcher does eventually rediscover some of the key episodes and images of a hidden past, his ultimate discovery perhaps is that the ordinary is in itself profound; and that what gives dignity to the insignificance of human life is the presence of the natural world, shown here in passages of precise and moving description.
Kita started writing this novel when he was twenty-three. It is a young man's book, produced at a time when postwar Japanese literature was itself still young, the sort of book that will probably never be written again since writers now have lost the kind of innocence that allows one to reach truths of this order. Given the narrator's obsession with butterflies and moths, readers may be reminded of Nabokov, even if the real powers behind the book are Mann and Rilke. But they will not be wrong for here, too, memory speaks with its real voice, telling its truest fictions.
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The Translator: Dennis Keene, an English poet who has lived and taught in Japan for many years, is known for his distinguished translations of Mono Kita's The House of Nire and Saiichi Maruya's Singular Rebellion, Rain in the Wind (awarded the Special Prize in the Independent Foreign Fiction Award in 1991), and A Mature Woman. Ghosts was given the Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 1992.
"Now, for my next trick," he said at last, in a wheezing voice that suggested he was suffering from throat cancer, and with an extravagant flourish he produced from somewhere a brilliant gold and green glass ball. It was about the size of an apple, and was so dazzling one was bound to think that if indeed a magic ball existed in this world then this must be it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have here in my hand a green ball, a treasure of peerless price. So fragile is it that, if I let it fall to the ground, it would instantly be smashed to smithereens. And yet, before your very eyes, I shall stop this ball in its descent; I shall stop it in midair and maintain it there !"
"I shouldn't do that if I were you," warned my cousin in a very cool, grown-up voice. "It could be dangerous."
"Keep out of this, junior. Right, here goes!"
He let the ball drop from his hand, but the next moment all his hopes were betrayed and the incredible happened, for the ball refused to halt in midair and plunged violently to the floor, where, as he had promised, it was smashed to smithereens. The magician's consternation was pitiful to behold, but he finally managed to recover his composure, this time producing a metal cup and calling me out from the audience to assist him. What I was instructed to do was to take up a very large kettle full of water and pour the entire contents into the cup.
Another cheeky comment from my cousin--"At least there's no danger of anything breaking"--made the magician curse him roundly under his breath, while he fiddled about with something inside his cloak. But by now the cup, which he was holding close to him, had filled up with water to the point of overflowing, and when I looked into his face I could see every sign of panic, so I stopped pouring, particularly as my cousin was shouting excitedly that it had started to slop over in a voice that would have put anybody off; but the magician only urged me to keep on pouring, keep on pouring away, since this was a magic cup that could take over half a gallon, and I shouldn't pay any attention to whatever the little pest might say; and the cup did indeed start to empty, and once more I believed in my uncle's magic powers. How this was done I didn't know, although there was some sort of device that drained the cup when it was on the verge of overflowing.
Then a dreadful thing happened. There was a dull ripping sound in the region of my uncle's chest, and immediately a large quantity of water flooded down his trousers, while the cup tilted and poured more water over his cloak. This all happened in a flash and, to a storm of laughter from the audience, the drenched magician was left standing, with his ears twitching uncontrollably, in a pool of water that had formed on the floor. Regardless of what kind of spectacle he was making, he then turned with terrible loathing on my cousin and tried to grab hold of him. But the boy was too quick for him, leaping nimbly over the chairs and making his escape, shouting out in a high-pitched, jeering voice that his uncle wasn't human but a monster with wiggly ears.
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