…[Oe's] an eloquent spokesman for a generation that can remember, vividly and viscerally, all sides of Japan's ambiguities—a generation that's beginning to exit the stage. "I am the last author who practices the old, very heavy or sincere way of writing," Oe has said. The combination of this seriousness with a fearsome, graphic candor—trained on himself most of all—makes him formidable, whether he's describing the challenges of being a parent or the sins of history…Death by Water…[is] a thoughtful reprise of a lifetime of literary endeavor. It's like the story of the emperor's new clothes, only with the man in question gazing calmly at his audience and declaring yes, it's true, he's completely naked and he wouldn't have it any other way. You have to admire his serene and total conviction, even if you flinch from the view.

08/03/2015
Layered and reflexive, Nobel winner Oe’s (The Changeling) novel concerns itself with an elderly writer, Kogito Choko, whose inability to write “the drowning novel,” a fictional account of his father’s death by drowning, threatens both his health and his plans to provide for his family after his death. As a child, Choko—then called Kogii—witnessed his father’s ill-fated boat trip in the Shikoku forest region of his childhood. When he revisits the forests and delves into the area’s history and folklore at his sister Asa’s invitation, he discovers not only other witnesses to his father’s voyage—including a nationalist former disciple of his dad’s—but that “the materials in the red leather trunk” required for his research were destroyed by his mother long ago. Bereft, Choko finds himself cooperating with an experimental theater troupe, who wish to adapt his body of work for the stage using the visionary Unaiko’s “throwing the dead dogs” method, whereupon meta-narrative discussion and the throwing of stuffed dogs occur on stage. Choko’s disappointment over the uselessness of the red leather trunk’s contents drives him to lash out at his adult, intellectually disabled composer son, Akari, and when his wife, Chikashi, undergoes treatment for a serious illness, she’s most concerned about this unprecedented rift between father and son. Told in echoing and overlapping accounts of conversations, telephone calls, and stage performances, Oe’s deceptively tranquil idiom scans the violent history of postwar Japan and its present-day manifestations, in the end finding redemption. Agent: Jacqueline Ko, Wylie Agency. (Oct.)

Praise for Death by Water

One of the San Francisco Chronicle's Best Books of the Year

"[Oe’s] an eloquent spokesman for a generation that can remember, vividly and viscerally, all sides of Japan’s ambiguities—a generation that’s beginning to exit the stage. . . . The combination of this seriousness with a fearsome, graphic candor—trained on himself most of all—makes him formidable, whether he’s describing the challenges of being a parent or the sins of history. . . . A thoughtful reprise of a lifetime of literary endeavor. . . . You have to admire his serene and total conviction." —Janice P. Nimura, New York Times Book Review

"The densest and most rewarding 432 pages you’ll experience this year . . . a wild ride of epic proportions . . . an absorbing, complex collage of multi-layered prose, poetic reference, memories and dreams . . . an essential revelation." —Terry Hong, Christian Science Monitor

"[Oe’s] novels continue to bewilder and amaze . . . Death by Water masterfully captures the vertigo of [an] old writer’s vivid inner world. That he accomplishes this while also looking outward—exploring the state of a nation and the passing of a generation, and what stands to be lost in the process—is nothing short of remarkable." —Gregory Leon Miller, San Francisco Chronicle

"An epic . . . Oe grapples with the idea of duty to family, self, and country but is firmly critical of glamorizing the past." —Elle

"[A] deeply layered portrait of an elderly man blown backward into the future, his eyes planted squarely on the past." —NPR

"It’s taken six years for this big novel by Japanese Nobel laureate Oe to reach Anglophone readers, but that wait has been for something immensely worthwhile . . . it is enchanting." —Booklist (starred review)

"[A] pensive novel, at once autobiographical and philosophical. . . . It's vintage Oe: provocative, doubtful without being cynical, elegant without being precious." —Kirkus Reviews

"Layered and reflexive . . . Told in echoing and overlapping accounts of conversations, telephone calls, and stage performances, Oe’s deceptively tranquil idiom scans the violent history of postwar Japan and its present-day manifestations, in the end finding redemption." —Publishers Weekly

"This novel...proceeds almost exclusively via conversation made up of intricate, literarily and dramaturgically knowledgeable, politically progressive, long speeches. And it is enchanting." —Booklist Starred Review

10/15/2015
Kogito Choko, an aging writer of international renown, is still grappling with the drowning death of his ultranationalist father during World War II. His controlling sister Asa possesses a red leather trunk that Choko believes holds the key to their father's death and the nucleus of his own final novel. When the contents of the trunk prove disappointing, Choko abandons his book, succumbing to a depression exacerbated by his wife's illness and an emotional split from his adult son, who suffers from learning disabilities. After a contrived meeting with the actress Unaiko, Choko partners with her avant-garde theatrical troupe, examining his earlier oeuvre, a political mind-set shaped by war, a career plagued by censorship yet resulting in a Nobel Prize, and the tragedy of a son who was born with severe limitations but is able to compose glorious music. Oe is known for obscuring the lines between reality and fiction, but here that practice feels self-indulgent. The didactic, hectoring style detracts from a narrative that should be thoughtfully introspective. Could it be that the graceful prose one would expect from a Nobel laureate has been lost in translation? VERDICT Originally published in Japan in 2009, this is the fifth in a series that began with The Changeling. The subject matter, familiar to Oe's followers, may not satisfy general fiction readers. [See Prepub Alert, 4/27/15.]—Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Paul Boehmer effectively delivers the latest title in Oe’s series about his literary alter ego, Kogito Choko. Choko is trying to piece together the circumstances of his father’s death and complete his magnum opus while juggling the weight of regret, the need for clarity, and the singular power of family ties. Boehmer uses distinct tones and emphasis to navigate the collection of Japanese names and terms; his cadence, however, takes a bit of getting used to. The care he gives his enunciation is necessary with such content, of course, but the result is sometimes a bit stilted. None of this actually makes the title unenjoyable; it simply reminds listeners that they’re listening to a text in translation. N.J.B. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

2015-07-15
Pensive novel, at once autobiographical and philosophical, by Nobel Prize-winner Oe (The Changeling, 2010, etc.). It's a scenario that conjures up the director of Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, perhaps the only person who could film it: Oe, now 80 years old, returns to his hometown in the person of alter ego Kogito Choko and looks deep into a past that might have been. In real life, Oe's father died in World War II; here, Choko's father has died during the war years in a drowning incident on a Japanese river, and now Choko, having endured decades of writer's block on the matter, is circling back to his youth to excavate the contents of a mysterious red leather trunk, "a small part of my clan's proprietary strange and funny lore," in the hope of reclaiming his literary birthright. What's in the trunk? And why did his father die? Was it really an accident? Mystery abounds, especially when it develops that Choko père was working to help alleviate wartime famine by detoxifying lilies. That's a matter of some complexity, and Oe lingers over the details without any apparent rush to get back to the main story; indeed, he takes a leisurely pace throughout, having set aside the fraught intensity of Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness and other early works. Complicating Choko's quest in the nearly idyllic countryside of his youth is the presence of an avant-garde theatrical collective, whose members are trying to stage Choko's ouevre and now puzzle over the story as it develops: "the part of the story where the writer sifts through the contents of the red leather trunk as the entire drowning novel unfolds before us is just a vague concept." Indeed, and part of the reader's task is to accommodate Oe's vagueness and misdirection to arrive at a crafty ending, embracing twists and turns and plot points that are, among other things, "radical and potentially scandalous." Like, say, a "pubic-hair fetish." In other words, it's vintage Oe: provocative, doubtful without being cynical, elegant without being precious.