Embracing Family
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.64 (804 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1564784053 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 190 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-12-11 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
An award-winning novel, critics have read this book as a metaphor of postwar Japanese society, in which the traditional moral and philosophical basis of Japanese culture is neglected in favor of Western conventions.. Occupation following World War II, Embracing Family is a novel of conflict--between Western and Eastern traditions, between a husband and wife, between ideals and reality. Set during the U.S. At the opening of the book, Miwa Shunsuke and his wife are trapped in a strained marriage, subtly attacking one another in a manner similar to that of the characters in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? When his wife has an affair with an American GI, Miwa is forced to come to terms with the disintegration of their relationship and the fact that his attempts to repair it only exacerbate the situation
Mary Whipple said "I'm in pain, and you're acting like YOU need help.". Written in 1965 by Nobuo Kojima, the author of more than thirty books, Embracing Family is the first of Kojima's novels to be translated into English. Set in Japan during the American Occupation after World War II, it is the story of a troubled marriage, the two parties no longer communicating on any level. Shunsuke, a formal man who never says or does anything that pleases his wife, travels a great deal, giving lectures on "the American way of life" to au
Shunsuke's efforts to make peace during his wife's illness are somewhat endearing, but his inability to really see her (and other women) as autonomous people may leave American readers with little sympathy for this traditional patriarch. Although he himself has philandered, Shunsuke, an expert on Western culture, is thrown into a crisis when his wife, Tokiko, asserts her independence by having an affair with an American GI. Kojima's controlled prose, as well as Shunsuke's cool response to emotional events, lend the novel a spareness bordering on sterility. When Tokiko develops breast cancer, Shunsuke endeavors to restore domesticity and cluelessly tries to connect with his son and daughter. All rights reserved. Shunsuke's attempts to impose authority leave him figuratively and literally impotent, and he overcompensates by building a preposterous Western-style house. Although outsiders eventual
D. Salinger, among others, into his native Japanese. Nobuo Kojima is the author of more than thirty volumes of fiction, essays, and criticism. In addition to his own writing, he has translated the works of William Saroyan and J. . He has been awarded the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Junichiro Literary Prize, and the Minister of