Allison Markin Powell’s elegant translation of Hiromi Kawakami’s Strange Weather in Tokyo, one of my all-time favorites, explores the cautious fault lines of a May-December romance. Tsukiko, an office worker in Tokyo, runs into her high school Japanese teacher at a bar, referring to him by the honorific “Sensei” because she cannot remember his name. But as their acquaintance deepens, it becomes clear that this unlikely pair has a quirky and enduring charm. He scolds her for not paying attention in class; she teasingly insists he can’t be trusted as a fan of a rival baseball team.
So why is this masterful translation worth a spot on your reading list? Strange Weather creates a lasting impression through a love story that avoids sentimental clichés and its compelling portrayal of Tokyo, a city that feels at turns warm, familiar, and alarmingly vast.
Few novels with a romantic plotline emphasize the balance between solitude and intimacy, but the relationship between Tsukiko and her Sensei has tacit boundaries from the outset. Though they go on a series of excursions together, from market days to a cherry blossom festival, many of their early meetings occur by happenstance: “We never made plans, but always happened to meet by chance. Weeks went by when our paths didn’t cross, and there were stretches when we’d see each other every night.”
It’s a credit to both translator and author that this bizarre relationship—a student and teacher with a thirty year age difference awkwardly circling in and out of each other’s orbits—never feels dull or contrived. Instead, it compels us to pay closer attention, to focus on the moments of disconnection that jar their closeness. Unsettled by Sensei’s fixation on the wife who died after deserting him, Tsukiko reflects, “This was just what my life was like, after all. Here I was, trudging alone on an unfamiliar road, separated from Sensei—whom I thought I knew but I didn’t know at all.” By the novel’s conclusion, she seems to have made her peace with their unconventional romance, accepting that “Sensei had already gone away somewhere, before I ever came to know him well.” Yet he has left an indelible mark on her everyday life, from her tofu recipes to a renewed interest in Japanese poetry.
Though some of its key action takes place outside the city, this novel’s depiction of Tokyo parallels that of its oddball couple: an intriguing mixture of hospitality and inscrutable coldness. The world’s largest city is a place where it’s easy to run into an old high school teacher and attend a hectic yet welcoming market day: “The grocery stalls thinned and gave way to stalls selling larger items…An LP was playing on an old record player…The music had an old-fashioned, simple charm.” Yet it can also be place of near total isolation, a place where a thirtysomething woman can eat, drink, wander, and work alone for weeks at a time. This stark contrast becomes clear one February night when Tsukiko leaves her apartment to escape her own seclusion. When she unexpectedly runs into Sensei, the night regains some of its magic; she feels a “faint promise of spring in the night air” as the “moon glimmer[s] in gold.” These languorous phrases not only illuminate an enigmatic Tokyo, but also the power of Markin Powell’s translation. With the absolute minimum of fluff, sentences shift from desolation to promise, bringing this cityscape alive.
Though Kawakami’s humorous Nakano Thrift Shop draws much attention from readers and reviewers alike, Strange Weather’s combination of longing and independence has a power all its own. The magic of its contradictions—friendly neighborhood and concrete jungle, comfortable love and incalculable loss—lingers on.
Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo, trans. Allison Markin Powell (Counterpoint Press, 2013)
Photo credit: Janko Ferlic, “Turned-on Street Light,” via Pexels.
