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WORK TITLE: Spring Garden
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 10/20/1983
WEBSITE: http://shiba-to.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Japanese
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born October 20, 1973, in Osaka, Japan.
EDUCATION:Received degree from Osaka Prefecture University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. University of Iowa, International Writing Program resident.
AWARDS:Minister of Education’s Newcomers’ Award, 2006, for Today, in that City; Akutagawa Prize, 2014, for Spring Garden.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Japanese novelist Tomoka Shibasaki expressed an interest in writing from the time she was an adolescent. She was able to make a career out of this interest as an adult, and her work has achieved major acclaim both within and outside of Japan. She has not only received Akutagawa Prize and Bungei Prize nominations, but was able to obtain an Akutagawa Prize for her novel, Spring Garden. Many of her works have been made available in English.
Spring Garden is one of those works. The narrative of Spring Garden focuses on two protagonists: Taro and Nishi. The two share the same apartment building, as well as a growing interest in a home that sits near their building, painted a whimsical light blue. The house itself seems to have become so iconic that it became the subject of a book. The book and the house are what draw Taro and Nishi together, pushing them into a friendship that helps to ease their loneliness and dissatisfaction with their lives.
At the start of the novel, Nishi is a manga artist whose mind seems to be perpetually stuck in her daydreams and/or focused intensely on the blue house and the book depicting those who used to live in it. She is intensely curious about the identities of the home’s previous occupants, and ponders about them frequently. Taro spends his life merely drifting from one day to the next. He is continually affected by grief, both for his late father and his failed marriage, and can’t seem to move on. He has no goals, no hopes, and very few friends to rely on; his free time is spent floating in and out of sleep. The apartment that Taro and Nishi live in is due to be torn down, and the majority of their neighbors have left their building to live elsewhere, compounding their loneliness. It is now just them, as well as an elderly woman by the name of “Ms. Snake.” All three of the characters come to form a bond with one another, revealing more about themselves and their lives prior to the present day.
However, things begin to change for the both of them when the blue house gains new residents. A family moves into the place, drawing Nishi’s interest, and she takes it upon herself to visit with and get to know them. Taro comes to meet and bond with the family as well. The two of them come to idealize the family and their home, which represent so many goals and wishes the two have yet to fulfill. Yet the inevitable destruction of Taro and Nishi’s home draws closer and closer, meaning they too will be yanked back down to the ground—and reality—and will have to make some tough choices about what to do with their lives. A Publishers Weekly contributor called the book “a thoughtful exploration of home, loss, and reconstruction.” A Kirkus Reviews writer remarked that the book is “[a]n elegant story that is in many ways more reminiscent of Mishima and Akutagawa than many contemporary Japanese writers.” Japan Times reviewer Iain Maloney commented: “Tomoka Shibasaki rightly won the Akutagawa Prize in 2014 for this sublime novella of dislocation and regret, and Polly Barton’s light, understated translation does it immense justice.” On the Japan Society website, Eluned Gramich wrote: “Spring Garden is a brief, compassionate tale about loss, friendship and architecture, and the many ways we can live our lives.” Fountain reviewer Keira Brown expressed that “the prose is interesting, as are the ideas Shibasaki touches upon.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, September 11, 2017, review of Spring Garden, p. 38.
ONLINE
Asia Literary Review, http://www.asialiteraryreview.com/ (May 15, 2018), author profile.
Fountain, https://thefountain.eu/ (September 4, 2017), Keira Brown, review of Spring Garden.
International Writing Program, The University of Iowa, https://iwp.uiowa.edu/ (May 15, 2018), author profile.
Japan Society, http://www.japansociety.org.uk/ (April 18, 2018), Eluned Gramich, review of Spring Garden.
Japan Times, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ (June 10, 2017), Iain Maloney, “‘Spring Garden’: A masterful look at loneliness and malaise in Tokyo,” review of Spring Garden.
Kirkus Reviews, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (October 1, 2017), review of Spring Garden.
Shibasaki Tomoka Website, http://shiba-to.com (May 15, 2018), author profile.
Tomoka Shibasaki was born in 1973 in Osaka and began writing fiction while still in high school. After graduating from university, she took an office job but continued writing, and was shortlisted for the Bungei Prize in 1998. Her first book, A Day on the Planet, was turned into a hit movie, and Spring Garden won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 2014.
Tomoka Shibasaki
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tomoka Shibasaki (柴崎 友香 Shibasaki Tomoka) is a Japanese author, born on October 20, 1973, in Osaka. She graduated from Osaka Prefecture University and worked for four years before her debut in 2000, the novel Kyō no dekigoto, which was filmed by Isao Yukisada in 2003 (English title: A day on the planet).
She wrote Sono Machi No Ima Wa (Today, in that City), which first appeared in Shincho in 2006. It was nominated in 2007 for the Akutagawa Prize.
In 2016, she participated in the International Writing Program's Fall Residency at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.[1]
Awards and honors
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2014 Akutagawa Prize (#151), winner for Haru No Niwa (Spring Garden) [2]
SHIBASAKI TOMOKA
2016 Resident
Asia
Eastern Asia
Japan
Japanese
SHIBASAKI Tomoka 柴崎友香 (fiction writer; Japan) is a novelist. In 2003 her first book, Kyō no dekigoto, was made into a film. Her work appears in literary magazines; several stories have been published in English translation. Her novel Sono machi no ima wa (2006) won the MEXT Award for New Artists; in 2014 her novella Haru no niwa won the Akutagawa Prize. Her participation is made possible by the Japan Foundation.
Tomoka Shibasaki was born in 1973 in Osaka and began writing fiction while still in high school. After graduating from university, she took an office job but continued writing, and was shortlisted for the Bungei Prize in 1998. Her first book, A Day on the Planet, was turned into a hit movie, and Spring Garden won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 2014.
Shibasaki Tomoka
SHIBASAKI TOMOKA is the author of more than twenty novels, short-story collections and essay collections, and has co-authored two additional books. Her novel Sono machi no ima wa won the Minister of Education’s Newcomers’ Award in 2006, and her acclaimed novel Haru no niwa was awarded the Akutagawa Prize in 2014. Its English translation, Spring Garden, is now available in the UK through Pushkin Press.
In Japanese
Spring Garden
Publishers Weekly. 264.37 (Sept. 11, 2017): p38.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Spring Garden
Tomoka Shibasaki, trans. from the Japanese
by Polly Barton. Pushkin, $13.95 trade paper
(154p) ISBN 978-1-78227-270-0
Two lonely tenants of a Tokyo apartment complex slated for demolition come to share a strange affinity in this quiet, unusual novel, winner of Japan's Akutagawa Prize. Nishi is a comic-strip artist obsessed with the quirky sky-blue house behind her apartment and a book of photographs called Spring Garden depicting its former residents. Taro is a shy divorce whose governing principle is to avoid bother and who continues to brood over his father's death a decade earlier. The unlikely pair form a tenuous friendship, at the heart of which lies their mutual Rear Window--esque fascination with the blue house, its garden, and its occupants, past and present. The plot is uneventful, but, with her spare, precise narration, Shibasaki (A Day on the Planet) keeps the story moving swiftly. Shibasaki transforms the mundane minutiae of Taro's and Nishi's lives into a thoughtful exploration of home, loss, and reconstruction. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Spring Garden." Publishers Weekly, 11 Sept. 2017, p. 38. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A505634862/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e1194c4c. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A505634862
SPRING GARDEN
by Tomoka Shibasaki ; translated by Polly Barton
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KIRKUS REVIEW
Atmospheric, meditative story of memory and loss in a gentrifying Tokyo neighborhood.
There’s not much room for gardens in the older districts of Tokyo, where concrete has long covered up fields and streams. In one spot, sold by a farmer long ago for development, block after block of apartment buildings sprouted in the postwar era, each named after a sign in the Japanese zodiac. Taro, divorced for three years and still not used to it, still grieving the death of his father on top of that, is almost alone in the urban wasteland that Shibasaki constructs; the only neighbors he’s aware of are an old woman he calls Mrs. Snake, after the apartment building in which she lives, and Nishi, a comic book artist. All are being pushed out of their homes, which are slated to be razed once the last inhabitants are gone. But what of the secret treasure at the heart of the nondescript district, one of “the sort of grand, Western-style mansions that had sprung up in certain areas of Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries”? Painted sky blue, with a pyramidal roof, it fascinates Nishi, who wonders who might have lived there. In time, Taro and Mrs. Snake come to see the sky-blue house as an anchor, even as their personal histories begin to unfold: Mrs. Snake, for instance, is now old, but when she was young, “she had been to see the Beatles playing the Budokan.” Ancient history, that, as is the unexploded bomb that disrupts the life of a nearby Tokyo neighborhood, prompting Taro to reflect that “the bomb was probably the same age as his father, and Mrs Snake too.” Just as the things of the surface belong on the surface, Shibasaki seems to be saying, so, too, are subterranean things—and memories, and secrets, and private artifacts—sometimes better left hidden, as her ending, steeped in foreboding silence, suggests.
An elegant story that is in many ways more reminiscent of Mishima and Akutagawa than many contemporary Japanese writers.
Pub Date: Nov. 7th, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78227-270-0
Page count: 154pp
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17th, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1st, 2017
‘Spring Garden’: A masterful look at loneliness and malaise in Tokyo
BY IAIN MALONEY
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES
JUN 10, 2017
ARTICLE HISTORY PRINT SHARE
The civic story of Japan from the dawn of the 20th century to the present is one of migration from the countryside to the city.
Spring Garden, by Tomoka Shibasaki, Translated by Polly Barton.
160 pages
PUSHKIN PRESS, Fiction.
Urban centers have spread up and outward as rural cities, towns and villages have grayed, becoming quiet shadows of their former selves. Where I live in rural Gifu Prefecture, the majority of the population has already retired. During Golden Week and the Obon holiday, the children and grandchildren of my neighbors return for a day or two before heading back again to the cities.
Urbanization leads to alienation. This isn’t a new idea, or even a remarkable one. But in a contemporary literary scene where melancholy and loneliness are the go-to tropes, readers could be forgiven for rolling their eyes at yet another novel dealing with an isolated, depressed 20-something in Tokyo. There are countless books of that sort, but Tomoka Shibasaki’s “Spring Garden” moves with a nuanced deftness all its own, a light footfall that many of her peers could learn from.
The book is centered around a Tokyo apartment block that is scheduled for demolition. Recent divorcee Taro is our lost protagonist, a man who lives alone, talks to few people, and coasts through his job at a PR firm on autopilot. He is depressed and doesn’t recognize the symptoms, though a telling early scene in which a colleague’s passing remark unleashes a flood of conversation from Taro clues the reader in to his desperation for simple human contact.
Shibasaki sets up echoes and mirrors of his mindset throughout. His loneliness is reflected in the empty apartments and dilapidated neighborhoods he traipses through on his way to work. Shibasaki writes, “GPS was invented to help people find their way around Setagaya … there were a lot of one-way streets and dead ends … whichever way he took meant some circuitousness.”
“Spring Garden” is a master class in novel writing, with no wasted scenes or images, each development and recapitulation moving the story along. Each evolution expands Taro’s emptiness.
Shibasaki uses the layers of old Tokyo under his feet and the unending building works — digging, unearthing, reburying — to parallel Taro’s own psychological journey. At one point he peers into an abandoned house, noting that “time inside the house was a cycle of murky days and nights of total darkness.” The parallel with his own solitary nights in his tiny apartment is left unsaid.
Each apartment in Taro’s block is named after an animal in the Japanese zodiac, but the building is emptying in anticipation of the coming demolition. The 12 signs represent a cycle of years, but as people move out and are not replaced, the cycle is broken. It feels like everything is coming to an end: The streets are full of roadwork, the train lines are under construction, and an unexploded bomb from World War II is unearthed — like the residents themselves — from under layer upon layer of successive present moments. Shibasaki reflects: “The bomb was probably the same age as (Taro’s) father. … Maybe it had been made around the time they were born and it had spent all those years, enough for someone to live a whole life, underground.”
Taro is one of the last residents, along with two women: comic book artist Nishi and the elderly Mrs. Snake. In three years of life in the building he hasn’t spoken to any of his neighbors, but the approaching deadline acts as a catalyst, pushing them into an impromptu microcommunity. It’s a touching irony that their urban loneliness is only assuaged when almost everyone else has left.
Nishi harbors an obsession with a house in the area that decades before had been featured in a famous photography book. The area was once the locale of choice for celebrities, another example of decline that weaves through the story. Nishi draws Taro into her fascination with the house, giving him a copy of the photo book. The images of the young artistic couple who once lived there speaks to the emptiness inside both of them.
The obsession gives the novel its drive, with the house representing a utopian fantasy that is potentially reachable by the characters, who befriend the current owners and slowly make their way into the house, leading to the book’s dramatic and surprising climax.
“Spring Garden” is dyed with nostalgia, and filled with memories of childhood holidays and grief. Mrs. Snake enters the story as a cut-out of an old Japanese woman, talking about little but food and the weather; however, as young people often learn too late, the elderly were young once. Snake’s anecdotes about seeing The Beatles at the Nippon Budokan in 1966 and traveling to Canada for a Neil Young concert beautifully illustrate a lost past.
Tomoka Shibasaki rightly won the Akutagawa Prize in 2014 for this sublime novella of dislocation and regret, and Polly Barton’s light, understated translation does it immense justice. Pushkin Press is in something of a groove right now with their Japanese translations.
It seems alienation — whether urban or rural — is far more bearable with a good book by your side.
Spring Garden by ShibasakiTomoka. Loss, friendship and architecture
Spring Garden
by Shibasaki Tomoka
Translated by Polly Barton
Pushkin Press (2017)
ISBN: 978-1782272700
Review by Eluned Gramich
Spring Garden is the second novel by Osaka-born Shibasaki Tomoka, having had her debut, A Day on the Planet, adapted into a successful film in Japan. This new book has also garnered the young author great acclaim, earning her the national Akutagawa Prize in 2014. Beautifully and subtly translated by Polly Barton, Spring Garden centres on twenty-something Taro. Recently divorced after a short-lived marriage and still reeling from the death of his father, Taro lives on his own in a one-bed flat in a condemned apartment block. The story follows him and his two neighbours who remain in the emptying building; the ones left behind, without much in the way of family. The unusual friendship that unfolds between Taro and Nishi, the woman from the top floor, leads him to surprising discoveries about his neighbourhood. She spends her time spying on the magnificent family house opposite their concrete block of flats. After discovering a coffee-table architecture book featuring the house called Spring Garden – reminiscent of an art and lifestyle magazine – which she shows Taro, the two of them become fixated on the building’s sky-blue walls, décor, gardens and, eventually, even the family who move in. ‘Spring Garden’ becomes a symbol of everything that the two wish for in life: style, space, independence, wealth, comfort and, most important of all, companionship.
The interest in urban living and the narratives that arise from so many strangers living in close proximity is not new, especially for contemporary literature set in Tokyo. However, Shibasaki succeeds in creating a unique atmosphere, poised between mystery and sympathy, violence and kindness. It isn’t just a story of loneliness in a big city; rather, Shibasaki shifts the focus onto the aesthetics of living, and the important relationships that may form by way of art and architecture. Although the novel takes place in a very real, specific place – Setagaya, a middle-class suburb of Tokyo – it is also a dream world. Both Nishi and Taro are big dreamers, walking the world with their head in the clouds, and this is partly what makes them such sympathetic characters. Taro, in his laziness and lack of ambition, spends most of his time dozing in his flat, reflecting and wondering; Nishi is an anime artist and lives through, and by, her imagination, which includes her passion for the blue-walled house next door and all that it represents. In some ways it’s a modern story for an instagram-age. Like Kinfolk magazine, ‘Spring Garden’ shows off the seemingly ‘better’ life of an artist couple: a woman doing yoga within perfectly decorated rooms, a man digging in an enviable garden. Nishi clings to the book like a bible: it doesn’t matter that these images don’t reflect the complex and unhappy episodes of the couple’s actual life.
Shibasaki’s writing is measured, understated and poetic at the right moments. The language comes alive as she hones in on the grotesque details of plants and animals, the details of a potter’s wasp and Japanese snowbell, for instance. Taro’s grief at losing his father is portrayed in physical, tangible terms: he grinds his father’s remains in a pestle and mortar so that they are fine enough to scatter, leaving traces of his father’s body in his kitchen. The way that Shibasaki pulls together the threads of Taro’s family life and colleagues without turning the focus away from the condemned building is deftly done, deepening a reader’s sympathy with him and making the novel difficult to put down.
When a new family with young children move into Spring Garden, Nishi befriends them and pulls Taro into the circle too. The events of the novel reach a fraught climax with the apartment block about to be demolished, and Taro forced into making decisions about the future that he has spent years avoiding. Spring Garden is a brief, compassionate tale about loss, friendship and architecture, and the many ways we can live our lives.
REVIEW: SPRING GARDEN BY SHIBASAKI TOMOKA
Posted by Keira Brown | 04 September 2017 | Books, Reviews | 0
Review: Spring Garden by Shibasaki TomokaRATING 57%RATING 57%
After the success of her last novel A Day on the Planet, which was adapted into a film, Shibasaki Tomoka is back with the novella Spring Garden, which excretes little in the way of emotion, affection or concern about its characters. With little in the way of narrative or plot, Spring Garden is very much a self-consciously Japanese work about Japanese architecture which incorporates characters that seem almost two dimensional, adding an unintentional element of Ghibli to this somewhat mundane yet short story.
Protagonist Taro is divorced, disliking his work, and residing in a half-empty building that is about to be dismantled. One summer morning, he sees a fellow resident climbing over the wall to the next-door house. Nishi invites herself inside. It emerges that her fascination with this blue house began in her student days twenty years before, and came from a book of photos called ‘Spring Garden’ from decades earlier. As the summer draws to a close, Nishi, Taro and the new family that has moved into the old house bond and drift, giving the reader a sense of their whole life in a few vivid snapshots.
All in all, it’s a markedly short read that screams Japanese. Lovers of Murakami will most likely appreciate this title, but unfortunately it was too shallow a read for my liking. The prose is interesting, as are the ideas Shibasaki touches upon, but the character development is lacking and there is nothing of particular striking about the book that would encourage me on to reread it. It’s a quotidian, almost banal tale, which disorientates the reader with its switch to first person near the end of the tale.
This tale of companionship from Shibasaki, who has previously won the Akutagawa Prize in 2014, was translated by Polly Barton. The themes of contemporary Japanese literature are widespread in this work, streamlining the writing in a manner reflective to that of art, architecture and in this case, relationships. It’s just disappointing that the writing does not allow for the reader to invest themselves in these characters and their measured interests and routine.
Spring Garden was published by Pushkin Press on 26th January 2017