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Indlæser... The Silver Spoon: Memoir of a Boyhood in Japanaf Kansuke Naka
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Perhaps the most admired childhood memoir ever written in Japan,The Silver Spoon is a sharp detailing of life at the end of the Meiji period (1912) through the eyes of a boy as he grows into adolescence. Innocence fades as he slowly becomes aware of himself and others, while scene after scene richly evokes the tastes, lifestyles, landscapes, objects, and manners of a lost Japan. Kansuke Naka (1885-1965) was a Japanese poet, essayist, and novelist. He was a student of the great novelist Soseki Natsume, who lavishly praised the "freshness and dignity" of Naka's prose and encouraged the first publication ofThe Silver Spoon. Hiroaki Sato is a writer, reviewer, and translator with over forty works of classical and modern Japanese poetry, prose, and fiction published in English. He has received the PEN American Center Translation Prize and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. He lives in New York City and writes a monthly column on politics and society for theJapan Times. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Indlæser...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)895.634Literature Literature of other languages Asian (east and south east) languages Japanese Japanese fiction 1868–1945LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit: (4.2)
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Naka writes about his childhood in Meiji-era suburban Tokyo (the 1880s and 90s). His father belonged to the "gentry" class, but was not especially well off - he started off as an estate administrator, and under the new régime went into business with his former feudal lord. Young Kansuke was a sickly child (as he tells us every other page or so, throughout the book), and was obviously rather too much fussed-over by the aunt who acted as his nanny. But he describes very charmingly the life of those times, when popular culture was still struggling to assimilate the changes being imposed on it. There's a lot about Buddhist festivals, fairs, entertainments, street-life, school, and about the normal preoccupations of childhood - toys, games, friends and playmates, etc.
A lot of the emphasis of the book seems to be Naka's desire to undermine the idea that Japaneseness necessarily revolves around nationalism and militarism - we have to laugh at wimpy little Kansuke re-enacting the 16th century sword fights from his story books in desperate hand-to-hand combat with his elderly aunt, and everyone in the book who embodies any kind of macho martial spirit - school bullies, a jingoistic teacher, Kansuke's big brother - is made to seem foolish. Flowers, insects, Buddhism, painting and poetry are clearly much more important. Sumiko Yano's drawings of cute little figures in kimonos flying kites almost manage to push this over into kitsch, but the genuine feeling and modesty of Naka's writing just about manages to save it. (