A grim view into the life of the homeless japanese
4 stars
The mc is a ghost wandering through Tokyo and observing the people around him. During this we get an understanding of how differently homeless people are treated in Japan. This highlights the vast differences in japanese social classes and the missing understanding of the wealthier towards the poorer. During the whole book there are parellels to the japanese emperor.
It's a tragic book about the marginalised people of Japan.
Eu li esse livro num impulso sem nem saber direito sobre o que se tratava, tanto que pela capa colorida eu não esperava que ele fosse mais um pra lista de livros de literatura japonesa melancólicos que tenho na minha estante.
Nesse livro acompanhamos o protagonista Kazu, que agora está morto. Ao longo da história, contada em primeira pessoa, ele conta sobre suas origens, sua vinda à cidade grande e todas as dificuldades e tragédias que ele encontrou em sua vida pessoal e, ao fim, como ele encontrou a morte.
Apesar de não achar nada wow, gostei bastante de acompanhar o protagonista e da sua narração. Não é um livro que te deixa extremamente triste, mas te faz refletir sobre o que o personagem passou, e o que tantas pessoas na vida real passaram e ainda passam igual a ele.
Esse livro ganhou o 2020 National Book Award de …
3.5
Eu li esse livro num impulso sem nem saber direito sobre o que se tratava, tanto que pela capa colorida eu não esperava que ele fosse mais um pra lista de livros de literatura japonesa melancólicos que tenho na minha estante.
Nesse livro acompanhamos o protagonista Kazu, que agora está morto. Ao longo da história, contada em primeira pessoa, ele conta sobre suas origens, sua vinda à cidade grande e todas as dificuldades e tragédias que ele encontrou em sua vida pessoal e, ao fim, como ele encontrou a morte.
Apesar de não achar nada wow, gostei bastante de acompanhar o protagonista e da sua narração. Não é um livro que te deixa extremamente triste, mas te faz refletir sobre o que o personagem passou, e o que tantas pessoas na vida real passaram e ainda passam igual a ele.
Esse livro ganhou o 2020 National Book Award de obra traduzida, e de fato a tradução (do japonês para o inglês) é bem fluída e não prejudica a leitura.
Sometimes I read a book that I basically liked, but I have troubles putting it into words. Tokyo Ueno Station follows Kazu as he... exists, sort of. Because Kazu is dead, the ghost of an elderly homeless man haunting Ueno Station.
The story reflects on Kazu's life. There's both a lot there and also very little: many of his major life events overlap with those of Japan's royal family, with even his birth falling in the same year as Emperor Akihito, yet his life was spent... working. He worked from his childhood to help support his parents and siblings, then spent much of his life doing work away from his wife and children in order to earn enough for them to live comfortably. He even worked construction for the Olympic games in '64.
And what did he have for it, in the end? Kazu is homeless, living in a large …
Sometimes I read a book that I basically liked, but I have troubles putting it into words. Tokyo Ueno Station follows Kazu as he... exists, sort of. Because Kazu is dead, the ghost of an elderly homeless man haunting Ueno Station.
The story reflects on Kazu's life. There's both a lot there and also very little: many of his major life events overlap with those of Japan's royal family, with even his birth falling in the same year as Emperor Akihito, yet his life was spent... working. He worked from his childhood to help support his parents and siblings, then spent much of his life doing work away from his wife and children in order to earn enough for them to live comfortably. He even worked construction for the Olympic games in '64.
And what did he have for it, in the end? Kazu is homeless, living in a large homeless camp with all sorts of characters who either live there or pass by on their way to other things. While Kazu's story is powerful and moving, I found most of these other characters who happen to be around the park to be relatively weak. Most of the time I had no idea what they were doing in the narrative, thematically or otherwise, and their inclusion just muddied my attempts to follow the somewhat meandering plot.
I think a lot of the themes around class differences and homelessness and work and family are especially well-developed, but this book covers a lot of ideas. I'm hesitant to say whether this is a net negative or not. While it's interesting how stuff like Japan's economy after World War 2 is naturally present in Kazu's development, I'm not sure if everything is given enough attention to be worth inclusion. Even the 2020 Olympics, talked about in much of the marketing material I read, barely warrants a mention. This is fundamentally a story about Kazu's life and there are some threads you can see weaving throughout his life and others that truncate themselves quickly.
All in all I really liked this book, it just felt like a bit of a scattershot at times. There is a very powerful core character embodying very powerful themes, but there's also a lot of other stuff that tend towards distracting from the point. Still, it's not uncommon for me to miss the point on stuff like that, so even if I'm only giving it 3 stars I don't feel bad about whole-heartedly recommending this book.
