Strange Weather in Tokyo is not the book to read when you are feeling peckish. Japanese snacks and dishes feature on almost every page, often described in extensive and mouthwatering detail. There’s also a fair amount of sake and beer imbibed on those occasions.
Thin almost transparent slices of octopus were submerged in a gently boiling pot of water then immediately plucked out with chopsticks when they rose to the surface. Dipped in ponzu sauce , the sweetness of the octopus melted in your mouth with the ponzu’s citrus aroma, creating a flavour that was quite sublime.
The eating and drinking form a background to a thoughtful, poignant tale about an unusual friendship between Tsukiko Omachi, a single woman in her late thirties, and Harutsuna Matsumoto, who is a widower in his late sixties/early seventies.
Omachi is capricious and quirky but somewhat a loner — she lives alone, doesn’t seem to have any friends and though her family live nearby she seldom visits. Mastumoto is reserved, thoughtful and always neatly-dressed (he even wears a suit and carries a briefcase to go mushroom hunting).
Their paths cross because they frequent the same small bar near a Tokyo station, often ordering the exact same dishes and drinks. But they never speak to each other or to anyone else except the bar tender.
One day Matsumoto breaks the silence, asking if she is really Tsukiko Omachi, one of the students he taught at secondary school. That encounter marks the beginning of a relaxed and informal friendship — they rarely plan to meet and weeks can go by without any contact but they’re always happy when they unexpectedly see each other in the street or at the bar.
Matsumoto is old-fashioned, didactic and precise in his habits. He reproaches Tsukiko for her poor knowledge of Japanese poetry (she was not a good student in his class); for the unsuitability of her clothes, her inelegant way of serving noodles and her unladylike behaviour— the way she pours beer for example. Periodically he’ll advise her not to drink any more sake.
Tsukiko doesn’t take offence however, seeing in his disapproving comments, the gentle hand of a teacher —in fact she never calls him by his name, only by the title of Sensei (the Japanese word for teacher). She loves to hear him recount haiku poetry and to see the array of plastic teapots he collected from railway stations during work trips away.
His benevolent nature seemed to originate from his sense of fair-mindedness. It wasn’t about being kind to me; rather, it was born from a teacherly attitude of being willing to listen to my opinion without prejudice. I found this considerably more wonderful than him just being nice to me.”
A fragile bond slowly develops between this pair. Though Tsukiko tries to keep her distance after she and Matsumoto have had a disagreement, she is drawn inexorably back to him each time.
Strange Weather in Tokyo is a charming tale of love that develops in unexpected quarters. Kurakami’s prose is subtle and restrained yet full of meaning. Her principal characters are fascinating portraits of people who follow the rituals of Japanese society yet also seem alienated from it.
We see this most particularly with Tsukiko whose alcohol consumption puts her more on a level with Japanese men than women. This struck me as odd based on (admittedly limited) knowledge of Japanese culture, and expectations of behaviour by the female members of society.
I kept wondering why Kawakami made her character drink alone in bars so often. I thought at first it was intended to signify that Tsukiko is a modern woman who defies convention but then began to feel that alcohol is a coping strategy for this young woman.
She does admit she can’t cope with adult hood and has become “quite a childlike person” over the years, one who gets emotional at times. She cries when she peels an apple, sinks into sudden silence because Matsumoto supports a baseball team she detests and walks off in a huff when they visit an island together. Is it life itself she struggles with, or relationships?
I don’t know I’m reading too much into this but the fact I’m asking these questions shows that this is a book which might appear to be just a simple story of romance but actually has a lot more depth and nuance. Actually now I think about it, many of the other books by Japanese authors that I’ve read have an outward simplicity and an inner subtlety. Whether that’s a characteristic of Japanese literature, I’ll leave other more experienced readers, to judge.
Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami: Endnotes
Strange Weather in Tokyo was originally published in 2001 and then released in translation in 2012 as The Bookcase ( one of the chapter titles). That was the title under which it was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. It was then released in the UK by Portobello Books in 2013 under its current title. My 2020 edition translated by Allison Markin Powell was published by Granta.
This is the second book I’ve read by Hiromi Kawakami. Our bookclub read People From The Neighbourhood in 2022, universally deciding that it was an intriguing but very odd book. Strange Weather in Tokyo is much more enjoyable, so much so that I’ll be looking out for more of Kawakami’s work.
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