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Rating: 
Summary: Warning: massive spoiler in the translator's introduction
Review: If you like books about injustice, this is a must read. The lives of Japan's Burakumin were as hard as those of India's untouchables, and this story of a teacher hiding the secret of his birth is really gripping. You'll definitely feel angry by the end of the book. I think everyone should read books like this sometimes in order to remind themselves that about standing up for weaker people and not turning a blind eye when you see racism or discrimination. I usually hate reading Japanese books in translation because the prose always sounds awkward. Kenneth Strong, the translator has done a wonderful job though, and everything sounds natural and the writing flows very well. I wish that more translators would realise that it is impossible to translate Japanese literally and that you pretty much have to re-write it if you want to produce something readable. The book has a few weaknesses. The bad guys are rather two-dimensional and the ending seems a little contrived but the book is definitely worth reading. A warning: Although the introduction is very interesting and definitely worth a read, the translator gives away the whole story so save it for the end.
Rating:
Summary: Warning: massive spoiler in the translator's introduction
Review: If you like books about injustice, this is a must read. The lives of Japan's Burakumin were as hard as those of India's untouchables, and this story of a teacher hiding the secret of his birth is really gripping. You'll definitely feel angry by the end of the book. I think everyone should read books like this sometimes in order to remind themselves that about standing up for weaker people and not turning a blind eye when you see racism or discrimination. I usually hate reading Japanese books in translation because the prose always sounds awkward. Kenneth Strong, the translator has done a wonderful job though, and everything sounds natural and the writing flows very well. I wish that more translators would realise that it is impossible to translate Japanese literally and that you pretty much have to re-write it if you want to produce something readable. The book has a few weaknesses. The bad guys are rather two-dimensional and the ending seems a little contrived but the book is definitely worth reading. A warning: Although the introduction is very interesting and definitely worth a read, the translator gives away the whole story so save it for the end.
Rating: 
Summary: A lively view of Japanese history and the pain of prejudice
Review: Shimazaki's life-like portrayal of a young man's struggle with prejudice and his own hypocrisy in Hakai create a delicate tension. Shimazaki's draws heavily on the sights, sounds and sense of natural things for his backdrop. Repeatedly I was reminded of the Japanese appreciation for nature as the main character, Ushimatsu hurried home to his father's funeral. Along the way, Shimazaki takes the time to describe the sky, the river waters and the flowering weeds growing beside the dirt road. Although it was his heavy use of nature that moved me, Okazaki was moved most by Shimazaki's depiction of humanity. "This spirit of religious self-examination extends through all of Shimazaki's works. This is Shimazaki's humanism rather than his naturalism." (p. 241) An additional strength to Hakai is the vivid detail Shimazaki uses in describing his main character's living quarters, the hard life of the drunkard's family, and the rigid caste system employed during that time. The reader has a full sense of being a member of the eta outcast group and a full sense of being a Japanese person in a complicated, striated social system. It simplifies these issues from a standpoint of historical study because instead of rote memorization of various levels of the community, literature allows the reader to mentally walk among the people, live with them and relate to them. The images created by his character bring such life to the community that it becomes easy to understand the structure. Even the simplest of scenes illuminates life in that time. This description of the funeral for Ushimatsu's father provides a vignette of life, religion and the relationship between people and nature: "The rough wooden coffin was draped in a white cloth, and before it stood a newly inscribed memorial tablet, offerings of water and sweets, and bunches of chrysanthemums and anise leaves." "Shimazaki Toson's Broken Commandment is another step in the right direction," Kojin says on page 76 before going on to explain that genbun itchi (written and spoken language as one) "was a literary form of the confession - confession as a system - that produced the interiority that confessed the 'true self.' " While it is certainly true the reader sees the world from the inside of the main character's mind in Hakai, Armando Martins Janeira compliments Shimazaki's humanistic approach in his book Japanese and Western Literature: A Comparative Study, page 129. "In 1906, Toson Shimazaki published the most significant novel of shinzenshugi (naturalism) literature, Hakai, about a young outcast who rebels against conventions which banish him from society." My only concern about Janeira's critique is that he credits Christians with giving Shimazaki and other Japanese Meiji era authors their insight to write against the social system. While I don't doubt that contact with external agencies helped bring new perspectives to Japan, I question whether anyone can accurately trace that origin to source. After making this questionable parallel on page 144, he pays a compliment to the author that I feel is absolutely correct. "Toson Shimazaki's Hakai is the first important novel inspired by deep humanist intention." I can't say whether it is the first, but it is deeply humanistic and inspiring because it holds such a valuable message that still has application today. Although humanism is a defining aspect of another novel from that time, Tsuchi (1910) ties humanism so tightly to naturalism that it is hard to say where humanity stops and nature takes over. Perhaps it is best defined by the author who links The Soil to the people: "Hardly a day passed in Oshina's life when she had not felt the soil beneath her feet. Barefooted except in icy winter, she had been its creature. And now, in death, she was it's creature still. Separated only by a thin layer of pine, her feet would rest on the soil forever." (Page 25) The power of Tsuchi lies in the reader's sense of the onerous tasks of daily existence as a poverty-stricken farmer in Meiji jidai Japan. I came to empathize with Kanji's hard work and failed attempts to improve his painfully meager existence as the years kept flowing past him and his life did not change for the better. At heart, he seemed to be such a genuine human and yet cursed by birth to be a Japanese farmer in the late 1880s. The complete poverty of his existence and the other farmers in his categroy described as mizunomi or water drinkers. His food seemed so scarce that he could not have afforded to subsist on much more than water. Both Tsuchi and Hakai give detailed descriptions of rural funerals during a similar time period. However, they differ in some interesting ways. "Ushimatsu's uncle, faithful to the old way of doing things, had provided for the journey to the next world a sunshade and a pair of straw sandles. A knife to ward off devils lay on the lid of the coffin. The praying and the beating of the drum began again, and talk of the dead man, punctuated by artless laughter and the clatter of dishes, was sad and at the same time lively," Shimazaki wrote in Hakai. (Page 138) In contrast, Oshina has no knife to ward off spirits, nor does the author mention any sunshade to cover her during her journey in the after world. Instead, she gets a shave. This difference may have been due to gender or to the difference in various regions at that time. "The acolyte lifted the lid of the casket, removed Oshina's hood, and stroked her cheeks with a razor. In as much as the hard life and hard labor of Tsuchi appears to have deeper roots in realism, the birth or rebirth of realism in Japanese literature took place in the late 1800s. Authors began to mimic the language of everyday use in their novels creating a direct form of literary realism.
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