Review

Going all out to exorcise demons of the past

A Man is the first book by Keiichiro Hirano (right) to be translated into English.
A Man is the first book by Keiichiro Hirano to be translated into English. PHOTO: AMAZON CROSSING

Fiction

A MAN

By Keiichiro Hirano, translated by Eli K. P. William

Amazon Crossing/Paperback/ 287 pages/$22.42/ Available here.

4 stars

Can a man have his identity stripped away so entirely that he is reduced to his gender, as per the nondescript title of this novel?

Keiichiro Hirano takes on such weighty issues as existential identity crises, and the lengths one might go to exorcise demons of the past in A Man, which was awarded the prestigious Yomiuri Prize for Literature last year.

This is also Hirano's first book to be translated into English. Canadian writer Eli K. P. William, who has lived in Japan for more than a decade, deftly captures the subtle emotional nuances characteristic of the Japanese language.

The titular man is Daisuke Taniguchi, an unassuming but likeable man who turns up suddenly in Town S, a forestry village in Miyazaki prefecture in Kyushu, finding work as a lumberjack.

He meets and falls in love with local stationery shop owner Rie Takemoto, who is divorced after the death of one of her two sons. They later get married.

The family is picture perfect, until Daisuke dies in a logging accident several years later.

Rie discovers that he is, in fact, not who he says he is.

Then who exactly is this man, who has not only adopted the name Daisuke Taniguchi, but also assumed the finer details of his life?

The immediate conclusion - one which she desperately does not want to believe - is that her late husband must have been a criminal on the lam.

She seeks out attorney Akira Kido, who represented her in her divorce proceedings, and they enter the murky world of backroom trading in "family registers", which are essentially identity papers, for people who want to get rid of their past.

The novel is set just after the March 11, 2011, earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster hit northeastern Japan. Kido does pro bono work to assist Fukushima survivors who had to evacuate in the wake of the nuclear fallout.

A Man is the first book by Keiichiro Hirano (right) to be translated into English.

But his wife resents him for spending so much time away from her and their young son and their marriage is on the verge of falling apart.

The Fukushima tragedy has - in real life and fiction - triggered discrimination arising from an us-versus-them mindset.

As a third-generation Zainichi (ethnic Korean in Japan), Kido finds himself wondering how to reconcile his ancestry with his identity as a naturalised Japanese.

It is here that the two threads of the story dovetail, with Kido quoted as saying: "It's unbearable to have your identity summed up by one thing and one thing only and for other people to have control over what that is."

A Man, which also discusses Japan's death penalty and divorce laws, can be rather over melodramatic.

Hirano could also have found more novel ways to get Kido closer to solving the mystery, rather than relying on coincidental lucky breaks.

But, as a social commentary, A Man is an insightful primer for readers interested in knowing more about Japanese culture and social issues.

If you like this, read: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (Head of Zeus, 2017, $19.62, available here). Pachinko details the struggles and discrimination faced by the Zainichi ethnic Korean community in Japan, in a multigenerational story of resilience told through the eyes of an immigrant Korean family.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on October 20, 2020, with the headline Going all out to exorcise demons of the past. Subscribe