Review: Ruth, a novelist living with her husband on a remote island on the Candian Pacific coast, finds a strange and mysterious treasure washed up on the beach: a Hello Kitty lunchbox filled with a secret diary of a teenaged girl living in Japan and letters written by the girl's uncle who was a sky soldier, or kamakazi pilot, in World War II. The narrative is split between the contents of the the secret diary (the teenager is named Nao) and Ruth's efforts to learn what she can about Nao whose diary records her a harrowing life at school and at home. Nao and her 104-year old grandmother who is a Buddhist nun, are charming. The story is compelling and fascinating. The reader, along with Ruth, learns about modern Japanese culture, Buddhist writers, World War II, feminist activists in Japan, Silicon Valley life. The novel, which is filled with gritty, real-life details, becomes increasingly infused with magic and, believe it or not, theoretical physics. I loved it.
Notes
Nao think that Jiko, the Buddhist nun, is 104.] We don't really know for sure how old she is, and she claims she doesn't remember, either. When you ask her, she says, "Zuibun nagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne." In a footnote, this is translated as: "I have been alive for a very long time, haven't I?" Totally impossible to translate, but the nuance is something like: "I have been caused to live by the deep conditions of the universe to which I am humbly and deeply grateful. P. Arai calls this the "gratitude tense," and says the beautify of this grammatical construction is that "there is no finger pointing to a source." She also says, "It is impossible to feel angry when using this tense." (17)
One of her vows was to save all beings, which basically means that she agreed not to become enlightened until all the other beings in this world get enlightened first. It's kind of like letting everybody into the elevator ahead of you. When you calculate all the beings on this earth at any time, and then add in the ones that are getting born every second and the ones that have already died -- and not just human beings, either, but all the animals and other life-forms like amoebas and viruses and maybe even plants, that have ever lived or ever will live, as well as all the extirnct specieis -- well, you can see that enlightenment will take a very long time. And what if the elewvator gets full and the doors slam shut and you're still standing outside? When I asked Granny about this, she rubbed her shiny bald head and said, "Soo desu ne. It is a very big elevator..." (18)
The great matter of life and death is the real subject of "The Merits of Home-Leaving," When Dogen exhorts his young forest monks to continue, moment by moment, to summon their resolve and stay true to their commitment to enlightement, what he means is simply this: Life is fleeting! Don't waste a single moment of your precious life! Wake up now! And now! And now! (63)
He was alasy coming home with brand-new high-end appliances, like Weber grillsa nd composting bins, that my mom didn't know how to use, but it was cool. We had a lifestyle. Here we were barely maanging a life. (136)
And talking about rules, the two of them had all these crazy routines they did for every different kind of thing you can imagine, ike washing their faces or brushing their teeth, or spitting out their toothpaste, or even going for a crap. I'm not kidding. They bowed and thankde the toilet and offered a prayer to save all beings. That one is kind of hilarious and goes like this:
As I go for a dump,
I pray with all beings
that we can removed all filth and destroy
the poisons of greed, anger, and foolishness.
In a lettter from Haruki #1 to his mother: I find myself drawn to literature more now than in the past; not the individual works as much as the idea of literature -- the heroic effort and nobility of our human desire to make beauty of our minds -- which moves me to tears, and I have to brush them away. (257)
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