The Paradise Bird Tattoo (or, Attempted Double-Suicide)

by Choukitsu Kurumatani, Kenneth J. Bryson (Translator)

Overview

Ikushima lives as a drone, slaving away for an advertising company that neither values him nor cares about his existence. He flees the city to become a vagabond, catching local trains to anywhere, eventually finding a miserable job skewering refuse animal organs for a local restaurant in Amagasaki, a town riddled with gangs and miscreants. He settles into a routine in the city, and through his brief and accidental encounters with his deeply troubled neighbors--the evil-worshipping tattoo artist, his former-prostitute-cum-Madame employer, an unclaimed child, and the fleetingly striking Ayako--he bridges the gaps in his social world and inadvertently begins to live. With this newfound, yet unacknowledged, passion for life, Ikushima embarks on a love affair with Ayako, which leads to dangerous consequences and threatens to tear through the barriers he has partitioned around his existence for so long.

At once quietly reflective and bitterly gritty, The Paradise Bird Tattoo (or, Attempted Double-Suicide) explores a new generation of worker bees who possess a candid fear of living with an inexplicable sense that they must go on for the sake of going on. Choukitsu Kurumatani artfully illustrates a world where not even love can provide salvation for those who are weary of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781582437040
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	03/01/2011
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Choukitsu Kurumatani graduated from the German Literature Department of Keio University. He began writing fiction on the side while working at an advertising agency.

Editorial Reviews

A major Japanese prize-winning book (Naoki, 1998) and film (Akame shijuya-taki shinju misui, 2003; in English, Akame 48 Waterfalls), Paradise is an unflinching meditation on late-20th-century disconnection. Middle-aged Ikushima, once again a self-described "corpse" in shoes and suit, recalls his drifting life 12 years ago: after abandoning his meaningless advertising job, he eventually settled in a squalid apartment in an industrial town, "eking out a living sticking bits of animal organs and chicken meat onto skewers." He initially observes his fellow inhabitants—prostitutes and johns, a volatile tattoo artist and his young son, the artist's enigmatic lover, various gang members—with a detachment that gradually fades. A surprise liaison proves dangerous and sends him on the run again. That Kurumatani's reputation is defined by his shishosetsu (a Japanese literary genre of realistic, autobiographic novels, translated as the "I-novel") adds poignancy to his protagonist Ikushima's desperation. VERDICT Gen-Xers with nihilistic literary preferences ("There's no fundamental meaning or value in human existence," Ikushima repeatedly insists) looking for a fast, gritty read need look no further.—Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

Library Journal

The raw loneliness of the characters in Kurumatani's modern take on the pre-war Japanese watashi shosetsu, or confessional "I novel," reveals a new generation of disfranchised Japanese salarymen. When Ikushima left an advertising agency at 27 he "slid into both emotional and spiritual bankruptcy." His days are now spent living and working in a derelict apartment building carving animal organs into yakitori skewers. Though the young man is vaguely aware of his neighbors-middle-aged prostitutes; a surly tattoo artist and his beautiful Korean girlfriend, Aya-chan-Ikushima is too withdrawn to reach out. He fantasizes about Aya-chan and the tattoo he glimpses on her back, "a great bird with outspread wings." When she seduces him, his withdrawal is replaced by obsession. Finally evicted, he and Aya-chan flee with a vague notion of committing suicide at a waterfall. In the end, though, these two lost souls lack even the drive to end their lives, and Aya-chan's tattooed phoenix foreshadows future hope. Though the writing is at times overwrought to the point of absurdity, Kurumatani's (Salt Spoon) tight control creates an electrifying emotional intensity.
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