Welcome to Litsy!

View from the passenger‘s seat on my way home yesterday. #beautybreak

First published in 1958 this book, according to Towles, launched the mystery genre in Japan. Having read it, I understand why. A crime that, on the surface, doesn‘t appear to be one. An airtight alibi. A grizzled veteran investigator who can‘t escape a sense of doubt, a young investigator who knows something isn‘t quite right. It has all the elements and Matsumoto‘s revealing of the truth is really well timed. I really enjoyed this one.

Given its themes of endings, decline, decadence, and life-weariness, and its post-war setting, Dazai's novel cannot fail to be sad. Terminal illness, omens of death, addiction, emotional cruelty and suicide feature prominently, and Dazai died by suicide the year after its initial 1947 publication. But...
Despite her brother's dismissal of the old order as failed, and the new generation as dying on the vine, there is a scintilla of hope in ⬇️

"Mother uttered a faint cry."

#FirstLineFridays @shybookowl.

"Man was born for love and revolution." ❤️?

"People always make a serious face when they tell a lie. The seriousness of our leaders these days! Pooh!"

"From that day to the present, we have managed to continue our solitary lives in this cottage in the mountains. We prepare meals, knit on the porch, read in the Chinese room, drink tea - in other words, lead an uneventful existence almost completely isolated from the world."

My idea of paradise! ?

Next up, Dazai's novel of the decline of the Japanese aristocracy immediately following WWII. Published in 1947, the year prior to Dazai's death by suicide, it's tragic in tone.
The translator's introduction in this edition was written in the 1950s, and is itself an interesting, if brief, historical insight into a contemporary Westerner's perception of Japanese post-war culture.

This book is wild. An architect has won a competition for designing a tower in Tokyo for prisoners, for whom we need to feel sympathy, cause aren‘t we all human beings? She feels conflicted about this, consults AI and a younger boyfriend and it‘s all pretty meta but so Japanese and I devoured it!

Thank you Helen, for sending me this one!

📸Teshima Art Island, Japan