[Read] ➼ Sortie parc, gare d'Ueno ➹ Yū Miri – Web-info-12.info

I was always lost at a point in the past that would never go anywhere now that it had gone, but has time ended Has it just stopped Will it someday rewind and start again Or will I be shut out from time for eternity I don t know, I don t know, I don t know This is a hauntingly beautiful, desperately elegiac, and quietly angry novel from Yu Miri The pervading sense of melancholy and the stark lyricism of the prose makes her story of Kazu a sweeping study of a nation and its history Here, K I was always lost at a point in the past that would never go anywhere now that it had gone, but has time ended Has it just stopped Will it someday rewind and start again Or will I be shut out from time for eternity I don t know, I don t know, I don t know This is a hauntingly beautiful, desperately elegiac, and quietly angry novel from Yu Miri The pervading sense of melancholy and the stark lyricism of the prose makes her story of Kazu a sweeping study of a nation and its history Here, Kazu who we discover quite soon in to the book is a spirit or ghost watches those among whom he used to mix, the busy crowds of shoppers and residents, and the homeless, gathered together in the park in their make shift shelters As the book travels forwards and back in time we learn Kazu s personal story as it becomes intertwined with the development of Japan, and Tokyo in particular, after World War 2 He had travelled to the city for work, leaving his wife and family, and then personal tragedies leave him homeless and rootless in Tokyo The very heart of the book, literally and metaphorically, is the loss of his son Koichi and how this impacts on his life Their lives are superimposed on the lives of the Imperial family Kazu was born in the same year as Emperor Akihito, and his son on the very same day as his successor, Naruhito As the homeless are periodically cleared out of the park, sometimes when the Imperial family are visiting nearby, later as the Olympic committees visit to choose Tokyo as host city for 2020, the difference in status could not be clearer.Kazu s spiritual existence seems to be some sort of limbo and, as the novel concludes, we are left with a strong suggestion for his cause of death, and hence a reason why he has been left this way He drifts in and out of conversations, hearing snatches of talk between people as they go about their daily business The general air of melancholy is matched by the weather, where it always seems to be raining, and the gentle falling of the cherry blossom, suggestive of so much in Japanese culture The prose itself is simple, with oftentimes a haiku like compactness of imagery from the very beginning Left behind Like a sculpted tree on the vacant land where a rotted house has been torn down.Like the water in a vase after wilted flowers have been removed.Left behind The park itself becomes a focus of our attention, being the place where so much of its history is the history of the city, from the fire bombing in 1945 to previous earthquakes and disasters It is a place of refuge, but also the place of death, and the tide of people and the transient homeless population are the modern inheritors of the place Kazu s life is the story of modern Tokyo and Japan from the 1964 Olympics to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Kazu is some sort of everyman figure leading us as he tries to find some sort of redemption His journey, our journey, is his way of working back through his life to the moment of his death, in an effort to find some meaning and a conclusion.Profound and haunting, this is a book that will stay with me for some time, I think It s not exactly a laugh a minute, but bear with it and it will reward you A personal journey that becomes a wider, cultural exploration, this is an important work that gives a voice to the unheard in a quietly devastating way 5 stars Like the setting and the historical aspects Some parts of the story were really engaging but a lot of it was not. Dans Le Parc D Ueno, Un Homme G S Est Install Apr S Une Vie De Labeur Pass E Loin Des Siens, Il Imaginait Une Retraite Paisible, En Famille Mais La Vie En A D Cid Autrement Apr S La Mort De Sa Femme, Il N A Pas La Force De Rester Dans Leur Maison Et Pr F Re Revenir Se Perdre Dans L Anonymat De Tokyo Sous Les Arbres, Il Se Construit Une Cabane De B Ches Et De Planches, Affrontant Ainsi Le Temps Et Les Saisons Posant Son Regard Paisible Sur Les Promeneurs, Tendant L Oreille Aux Commentaires Des Visiteurs Du Mus E Attenant Au Jardin, Aux Chants Des Oiseaux Comme Aux Mots Insolites De Ses Compagnons De Mis Re, Le Vieil Homme Vaque En Silence Aux Abords De L Tang Ou S Avance Dans Le Hall De La Gare, L O L Espace Fourmille Encore D Urgences Et D Horaires, Il Se Souvient Dans Le Parc D Ueno, Le Vieillard Coute La Beaut Et La Mis Re M L Es Mais Les Op Rations Sp Ciales De Nettoyage Sont De Plus En Plus Nombreuses En Ces Lieux, Preuves Chaque Fois Plus Traumatisantes Pour Les Sans Logis Car Il Leur Faut Fuir, Sans D Lai D Construire Leurs Baraquements, Effacer Toute Trace De Leur D Rive Au Passage De L Empereur, Comme Aux Yeux Du Monde L Approche Des Jeux Olympiques De , Il S Agit L De Ne Pas D Naturer L Image De Tokyo The mesmerizing glow of deep melancholia emanates from this little book I felt its slow pull deep in my bones This should come with a word of precaution for those of us that are fragile, those among us barely holding on. This short novella on cultural memory narrated by a homeless man whose spirit lingers on in Ueno Park after his death was the first translated work where I was struck by the simple and fluid elegance of the language, something I had all but given up on based on the other translations of Japanese works I d sampled so farI used to think life was like a book You turn the first page, and there s the next, and as you go on turning page after page, eventually you reach the last one But life isThis short novella on cultural memory narrated by a homeless man whose spirit lingers on in Ueno Park after his death was the first translated work where I was struck by the simple and fluid elegance of the language, something I had all but given up on based on the other translations of Japanese works I d sampled so farI used to think life was like a book You turn the first page, and there s the next, and as you go on turning page after page, eventually you reach the last one But life is nothing like a story in a book There may be words, and the pages may be numbered, but there is no plot There may be an ending, but there is no end Left behind Like a sculpted tree on the vacant land where a rotted house has been torn down Like the water in a vase after wilted flowers have been removed Left behind But then what of me remains here A sense of tiredness I was always tired There was never a time I was not tired Not when life had its claws in me, and not when I escaped from it I did not live with intent, I only lived But that s all over nowThe protagonist s life is intertwined with that of his Emperor by a series of coincidences they were born the same year, both of their sons were born on the same day, and they are often tied to the same spots Kazu is a hard working family man who labored in the capital during the run up to the 1964 Olympics, and was then one of the many migrant workers forming the backbone of Japan s economic rise The novel recounts the twists of fate and circumstance that led to him becoming one of the unfortunate souls in the vast homeless tarp tent camps in one of Tokyo s most famous public parksBefore, we had families We had houses Nobody starts off life in a hovel made of cardboard and tarps, and nobody becomes homeless because they want to be One thing happens, then anotherHis often stream of consciousness reminiscences are woven together with snippets of overheard conversations of passersby, as well as with bits and pieces forming a picture of Ueno s long history Once the site of a bloody battle during the Civil war which resulted in the Meiji Restoration, it suffered earthquakes and firebombings, is now famous for its museums, temples and shrines, the zoo, and as a prime cherry blossom viewing spot and where the presence of homeless squatters is accepted, or at least somewhat tolerated until the Imperial family comes through to visit an exhibition, or the Olympic committee pays a visit, and they are forced to vacate the park at short notice, with all they ownTo be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past, while still being in full view of everyoneTokyo Ueno Station combines personal tragedies with wider social problems in a gentle, compassionate, and poignant critique of economic development, showcasing the working class it leaves behind in their struggle As we near the 2020 Olympics in Japan, it s a timely and very much intended reminder that the unsavory sides of an event of such magnitude need to be addressed instead of swept under the rug, so that the already underappreciated aren t further taken advantage of, only to be discarded and pushed to the margins of society even , as has happened before All my book reviews can be found here Buy on BookDepository Maybe 3.5 I enjoyed this one an intriguing, curious and sometimes confusing read There were some really powerful moments, though it did take me a while to get into it. 4.5, rounded up Thoughts to follow. My first instinct after reading Yu Miri s Tokyo Ueno Station is to ask why horribly random and tragic things happen to good people How does somebody become homeless, subject to the whims of weather, police always moving you around, or random violence Why do our loved ones die sudden, occasionally painful, deaths Why do the majority of people you encounter look at you but never really see you Our narrator experiences all of these things andand yet to answer the fort part part of th My first instinct after reading Yu Miri s Tokyo Ueno Station is to ask why horribly random and tragic things happen to good people How does somebody become homeless, subject to the whims of weather, police always moving you around, or random violence Why do our loved ones die sudden, occasionally painful, deaths Why do the majority of people you encounter look at you but never really see you Our narrator experiences all of these things andand yet to answer the fort part part of the question, is he a good person He admittedly abandoned his family for years, has no memories or photos of his children growing up, and while he justifies it by saying he needed to work far away in Tokyo to support them, it feels like the actions of a man not willing to accept the responsibilities of a life he chose After several tragedies he reconnects with his granddaughter only to disappear again without telling her why He claims he doesn t want to be a burden on her young life but this also feels like an excuse Like a man who has run away his whole life Maybe I am not as sympathetic as some to this particular character but I can t deny that Yu Miri s depiction of his world is anything short of heartbreakingly beautiful The story is peppered with random conversations in the park about mundane things like dinner, family photos, or marital problems that our narrator hears but is not a part of It is in many ways a metaphor for his existence He is in the world but in now way a part of it Life happens around him but he has long since given up taking any active part in it He just goes on because there is simply nothing else to be done While I never thought a book would depress me as much as the author s previous work Gold Rush , Tokyo Ueno Station does so While this book lacks the violence of her previous work, it shares the sense of life as something occasionally cruel, often random and senseless, and always difficult to navigate Tokyo Ueno Station is the latest book from the wonderful Tilted Axis Press, translated by Morgan Giles from Yu Miri s 2014 novel JR and a powerful exploration of the other side of economic development and prestigious projects.The novel begins with a lament part of which reads Left behind Like a sculpted tree on the vacant land where a rotted house has been torn down.Like the water in a vase from which wilted flowers have been removed.Left behind.But then what of me remains her Tokyo Ueno Station is the latest book from the wonderful Tilted Axis Press, translated by Morgan Giles from Yu Miri s 2014 novel JR and a powerful exploration of the other side of economic development and prestigious projects.The novel begins with a lament part of which reads Left behind Like a sculpted tree on the vacant land where a rotted house has been torn down.Like the water in a vase from which wilted flowers have been removed.Left behind.But then what of me remains here A sense of tiredness.I was always tired.There was never a time I was not tired.Not when life had its claws in me, or when I escaped from it.I did not live with intent, I only lived.But that s over.before our narrator locates us If you go out the ticket gates at JR Ueno Station s Park exit, and look over the the thicket of ginkgo trees, you ll always see homeless people there For me, and most visitors to, or inhabitants of, Tokyo, one thinks of Ueno Park as the place one takes the Yamanote line to visit in cherry blossom season, or at any other time for the many museums or and the zoo But situated right in prime Tokyo, is a large community of the homeless To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past, while still being in full view of everyone.Our narrator is Kazu, now as becomes quickly clear a ghost, relatively recently deceased, but a former inhabitant of the homeless community.The novel, which he relates in a very non linear fashion, takes us through his life and what bought him to living in the makeshift shelters in the park Before, we had families We had houses Nobody starts off life in a hovel made of cardboard and tarps, and nobody becomes homeless because they want to be One thing happens, then another.Born in Fukushima in 1933 the same year as the Emperor Akihito his son was born in 1960, the same year as Crown Prince Naruhito who will in fact ascend to the Chrysanthemum Throne in May 2019 But the life of Kazu is very different to that of the Emperor, who he sees one day in his motorcadea life that had never known struggle, envy or aimlessness one that had lived the same seventy three years that I had Kazu migrated to Tokyo in 1963, arriving in Ueno station, and working as a day labourer in the construction effort for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics His subsequent life was that of an itinerant labourer, helping to build the economic future of Japan while struggling to maintain his own, his wife and two children left in Fukushima, their lives barely known to him as he strives to provide for them, returning to his hometown only when tragedy strikes.Kazu s narration covers not just his life, but intersperses the dark history of Ueno Park bloody battles around the time of the Meiji Restoration, earthquakes, the firebombing of the City in WW2 as well as his observations of the homeless still in the park, snatches of conversation fromwell heeled visitors, Buddhist funeral rights and even a series of beautiful verbal images of roses based on the series by the 18th 19th century French botanical painter Pierre Joseph Redout.That the author has her narrator hail from Fukushima, now known worldwide due to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, is no coincidence The novel was written in response to both the Tokyo 2020 Olympic bid but also the 2011 T hoku earthquake and tsunami, which overshadows Kazu s thoughts from the novel s very opening words There s that sound again.That sound I hear it.But I don t know if it s in my ears or in my mind.I don t know if it s inside me or outside.The novel, in terms of focusing on the downside of and loses from economic development, has similarities with the Man Booker International longlisted At Dusk, but this is a far superior novel Crucially, unlike Hwang Sok Yong who chose a narrator with which he had no sympathy, Yu s compassion and empathy is evident on every beautifully moving page Yu Miri herself is a Zainichi Korean ancestry, born and living in Japan giving her an outsider status in both countries And following the 2011 T hoku earthquake and tsunami, she moved to the Fukushima region to support the area.I quoted Kuzu early that To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past, while still being in full view of everyone but there are some days the homeless aren t even allowed to be in full view and are forced, often at short notice, to tear down their shelters and move to another area, or vacate the park when the Imperial family come to Ueno to visit the museums or when the Olympic Committee are in town.Although the 2020 Olympics is barely mentioned indeed when the novel was set, Tokyo was bidding to win them the author in an interview has made it clear that this is key to the novel Q The Olympic Games are going to be held in Tokyo in 2020 Do you plan on writing anything to do with that A My book JR Ueno Eki Koenguchi depicts the story of people from a very poor region of Tohoku who left their homes to work on preparing for the first Tokyo Olympics held just after the war, but who were used and discarded, ultimately becoming homeless In the present day too, all the manual labourers on building sites across the entirety of Eastern Japan, including Tohoku, are being drawn away to the Olympic venue sites as the money is better there Because of that there are no people working on the reconstruction and decontamination in Tohoku Thus these sites are having to recruit from regions where wages are low, such as Nishinari in Osaka or from Okinawa, and that means that the people who do come are only one step away from homeless themselves people who have no insurance, no family and who may already be ill So in Minami Soma today you see these migrant labourers without insurance coming to the hospitals for consultations and then running away when the time comes to pay There are also a lot of alcoholics and it is affecting public peace and safety It is bad for the region but on the other hand I truly do feel sorry for the migrant workers themselves Some of them even pass away while they are working, stung by wasps or having accidents on the building sites etc When one of those people dies, nobody will come to collect their bones after cremation There is a temple close to my home and you can see how the temples in Minami Soma have now become the final resting places for the bones of the poorest minimum wage migrant labourers from all across the nation I want to write about this, a part of the reality of the Tokyo Olympics after all.Morgan Giles does a wonderful job for her first full length translation and, in addition to her undoubted linguistic skills, this is also a function of her personal passion for the novel s message From an interview Q The protagonist Kazu s life began as a labourer ahead of the 1964 Olympics With the 2020 Olympics around the corner, how do you feel Yu Miri s work and your translation of Tokyo Ueno Station are contributing to the conversation by bringing to the centre of the page those on the peripheries of Japanese society A I hope it s the flaw in the jewel, as the phrase goes in Japanese I hope people can t watch the opening ceremonies without feeling physically sick that labour, time and money were diverted from recovery efforts in the North Eastern coastal region to build Olympic facilities That homeless people have been evicted from parks in Tokyo because their presence isn t compatible with the Olympic dream That homeless people from as far south as Okinawa are being hired to do construction in the North Eastern coastal region because companies are that hard up for labourers, leading to a situation that Miri calls a reverse Tokyo Ueno Station these homeless labourers are dying in Fukushima, names unknown and no relatives to be traced, with nowhere for their remains to go except a temple that has agreed to be the final resting place for these anonymous men who worked until they died to rebuild a country that doesn t care about them.Highly recommended 4.5 stars To be poor means to be invisible Tokyo Ueno Station tells the story of a laborer who had to work hard all of his life in order to support his family only to end up homeless in Ueno Park near the title giving railway station Our protagonist Kazu Mori was born into a poor family in Fukushima and when he himself gets married and has children, he has to spend most of his time away from them, trying to earn enough money in far away towns A family tragedy brutally confronts him with the fact that To be poor means to be invisible Tokyo Ueno Station tells the story of a laborer who had to work hard all of his life in order to support his family only to end up homeless in Ueno Park near the title giving railway station Our protagonist Kazu Mori was born into a poor family in Fukushima and when he himself gets married and has children, he has to spend most of his time away from them, trying to earn enough money in far away towns A family tragedy brutally confronts him with the fact that he is alienated from the people he loves, that he has spent his life toiling away out of necessity while thegrandfather clock , which features again and again in the text, has mercilessly measured the time that has passed him by Kazu starts falling apart The narrative clue Yes, the version of Kazu who tells us his story is now physically dead, a ghost roaming the park and the station, but was he ever alive to mainstream society Kazu was born in 1933, the same year as Emperor Akihito, his son on the same day as Crown Prince Naruhito the current Emperor of Japan , but while the Imperial family lives a carefree,purelife, Kazu s poverty amounts to asin , as it leads him to make decisions he himself disapproves of, which ultimately breaks him Yu Miri spoke to homeless people in Ueno Park to be able to properly convey their perspectives, and as they of course differ, the short novel also tells the stories of some other homeless people Kazu meets On top of that, Kazu s life story, the monuments, sights and exhibitions in and near the park as well as Japanese history are steadily connected and contrasted, and Kazu frequently listens to passersby and absorbs their dialogues The result is a fragmented text which is held together mainly by a mounting sense of doom The author of this book knows a thing or two about inequality As the daughter of Korean immigrants, she is a so called Zainichi, part of a discriminated minority you can learnabout this in the novel Pachinko or the non fiction book Three Tigers, One Mountain A Journey Through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea, and Japan The outsider is forced to live in between, in a constant state of transit, and the question of belonging, of finding or losing a home is a constant theme throughout the novel While the structure of the book is ambitious and well thought out, the fragmented style does not develop a pull that would make the story truly immersive Many explanatory passages about monuments or historical events seem a little excessive, some dialogues are contrived Still, this is an interesting experiment, full of empathy and deeply sad