Reviews:
(1 year ago) |
04 Mar, 2024
Constant reflecting on death
|
![]() (6 months ago) |
23 Mar, 2025
A beautifully sad story. I’m sure everyone will be able to relate to some part of the narrative which touches loneliness, guilt, self-doubt, isolation and love.
|
(2 months ago) |
12 Aug, 2025
I read Kokoro on the suggestion that it was like a literary version of an Ozu Movie.
Similarities: Set in urban Japan; about relationships and family; in the first half little happens and nothing is fully spelled out so a lot is left to your interpretation; characters infrequently show strong emotion (we have to infer their emotions from oblique actions and words); has trains in it
Dissimilarities: set pre WWI so a different context; in a word based medium and primarily the internal monologue or letters of a character, so very ‘talky’, unlike Ozu which is primarily visual and shows us gestures and expressions and a lot of quiet; In the second half the main character reveals he is surprisingly melodramatic and paranoid (which makes for frustrating reading)
Also, strong misogyny (“Women are stupid” is a statement from one character)
|
More books from Japan
More books from Read Around Asia Challenge