The Hole

The walk between our house and the 7-Eleven was probably beautiful in the right season. There were even a couple of signs describing the view when migratory birds visited in the winter, but it was summer, and no matter how scenic it was, a paved path in the middle of this heat was too much to take. The lack of breeze wasn't helping, either. The cries of the cicadas made the air feel even stickier.

I remember being a young child and being frustrated with letters because I didn't know how to read them, but I knew that they held meaning that I just didn't have the knowledge to grasp yet. That's how this book made me feel.

This was my first foray into Japanese literature and even though I was repeatedly warned that it was distinctly different from Western fiction, I'm still feeling like I didn't just read a book so much as I experienced some other form of media altogether. Scenes that I thought were foreshadowing future events or building up for some twist reveal just didn't pan out like that, but at the same time I don't feel mislead or cheated as much as I feel that something went completely over my head.

The main character, a woman named Asahi, moves out of the city and into the countryside with her husband when he's offered a better-paying position in the same rural town his family still resides in. The husband's mostly a non-character as he comes home super late and is mindlessly on his phone in the few scenes he does make an appearance. But my expectations were subverted when Asahi herself, our literal narrator, also ends up feeling like a mostly irrelevant character. She kind of just ambles about from scene to scene in her newfound unemployment until it's time for another character to monologue at her while she patiently waits for them to stop.

There's also a strange subplot (if you can even call it that) about a local cryptid that's just kind of hand-waved away? Like I was getting legit horror-trope vibes at the beginning of the book that ended up fizzling out into a non-issue towards the middle of the book.

If nothing else, it was a beautifully atmospheric book that made me feel wholly immersed in a way I haven't in a while. Physically I was trying to stay warm as fall slides into winter in the northeast, but mentally I was in isolated rural Japan during the peak of summer, being deafened by cicadas. (Why were the cicadas mentioned so much?)

I did not hate this book. I just wish I had the cultural mindset to get more enjoyment out of it. I'm glad I gave it the chance, but I don't know if I'd go out of my way for another translated work of Japanese literature if they all tend to follow this, "weird things happen and then the book just kind of ends," formula. I can't help but feel like there were larger themes about focusing so much on your work life that you neglect the simpler pleasures of life you were attuned to as a child. When I mentioned these to my husband, who recommended this book to me in the first place, he basically cautioned me not to read too much into it.

This was a curious read with some hits and misses. In the moment, I didn't really pick up on the allegory about one's place in society, but after reflecting, I found that it was actually fairly heavy handed, yet lost in excessive descriptions of the setting and internal commentary. Not that I minded, though. I found the hyper focus on the descriptions of the summer, the grass, and the cry of the cicadas to be filled with nostalgic lethargy, reminding me of my own home. That was probably my favorite part of this story where everything else fell just a bit flat. While the overall theme was heavy handed, there were aspects of the story that didn't seem to fit and weren't explained, leading to an almost misplaced feeling of whimsy. This kind of mysticism in literature isn't bad by any means, but pairing mysticism with the over explained allegory made it feel disjointed. At the end of the day, I found it to be a beautiful, sensory read which partially made up for lacking construction.