Toddler Hunting and Other Stories, collection written by Kono Taeko, translated from the Japanese by Lucy North and Lucy Lower, New Directions, 2018
Reviewed by Clayton McKee, Copy Editor
Interior and exterior, public and private, Kono Taeko explores constructed façades in social situations and crashes them down in intimate settings. Each of the narratives in Toddler Hunting and Other Stories delves into the feminine psyche and investigates themes of motherhood and family. Shifts from exterior persona to interior desire rupture Kono’s cold prose, shocking the reader out of socially normative interactions and thrusting them into the taboos lurking deep inside, followed by a quick return to her straight-faced writing. This keeps readers on their toes, not knowing when the next rupture will occur. Contrasting the interior with the exterior and social expectations with personal desires has the effect of enrapturing, sometimes shocking the reader, plunging them into the depths of her/his own imaginary and propelling each story forward.
Kono Taeko is considered amongst the most influential Japanese women writers that first made an appearance in the 1960s. Her impressive portfolio includes over a dozen works in Japanese, all centered on unexplored aspects of human character—female characters in particular, further pushing the envelope not only on these unexplored aspects but also on a gender that was underexplored in Japanese literature at the time. Kono comes to the English-speaking world in this translated collection published by New Directions, which includes a lot of her short fiction written during the sixties. Not only was she the first woman to be on the committee for the Akutagawa Literary Prize, but she also received that prize in 1963, followed by the Yomiuri Prize in 1969 and the Tanizaki Prize in 1980. Before dying in 2015, she was also awarded a Bunka Kunshō, or Order of Culture, which is presented by the Emperor.
The titular story, “Toddler Hunting,” delves deep into the psyche of Akiko, a character with a strong distaste for little girls and a strange attraction to little boys. Her disgust for female children led her to not desire kids at all, and knowing that her “fear” is not logical, she hides behind a façade of disgust for all children. This disgust is contradicted, however, as she impulsively buys lavish clothing for young boys, only to gift them to her acquaintances’ boys in hopes to watch them “crossing [their] chubby arms over [their] chest, concentrating with all [their] might . . .” just to take the shirt off by themselves. Akiko describes such things as an “intensely pleasurable.”
Her strong attraction to little boys turns into fantasy as she dreams of a man urged by a female voice (perhaps her own) whipping a small boy tied to a tree. Immediately after, Akiko and her long-term boyfriend engage in whipping, leading the police to come to her door to investigate a noise complaint. The juxtaposition of Akiko’s fantasies of little boys and her love life highlights the bizarreness found within the mentality of these characters. Akiko is unmarried and childless and she enjoys engaging in rough sexual activity with her exclusive partner. This activity is replicated on a small boy, who she also covets, albeit only in her fantasies. All of this remains bottled up inside Akiko as she masquerades in public as a typical aging woman.
As inner fantasy becomes externally embodied, Akiko is forced to hide her cuts from the whipping at the bathhouse, showing that she recognizes the strangeness of her inner desires. Additionally, the reader is privy to certain desires that she refuses to share with her partner, Sasaki—notably the eerie obsession with little boys. Despite all of these oddities of character and atypical desires, Kono resists providing readers with any sense of conclusion. Each story, in fact, ends with a sense of unfulfilled desire—the reader’s desire to discover what happened, and the character’s lack of hope for fulfillment of her internal desires. Akiko’s story ends after she helps a boy remove seeds from a watermelon. In a moment of intense pleasure for Akiko, the boy shares the watermelon with her but refuses to eat more after the fruit touches her lips. He leaves her alone, holding the watermelon, unsure how to proceed.
As mentioned, taboos and femininity arise in every story. To provide another sample, Fumiko and her husband, Matsuda, in “Ant Swarm,” don’t desire kids at all, and despite their love for rough intimacy, he refuses to let her use any form of birth control. The story begins with her period being late, which quickly turns into fear of pregnancy. She pinpoints the exact instance of insemination: one day during her cycle, when he couldn’t restrain himself. But, with the lack of restraint came his lack of ability to please her and cause her the pleasurable pain that she always loved.
While Matsuda’s paternal instinct kicks in, Fumiko’s maternal nature doesn’t and she begins to despise her unborn child and her husband, who is free to continue as he pleases while her life (her studies in the United States, smoking, etc.) stops for the child. Then, she gets her period. The couple returns to their normal, pain-induced pleasures, this time talking about having a baby when the time is right. After Matsuda forgets to put the meat back in the fridge that they used to reduce swelling on Fumiko’s intimate wounds, Fumiko finds that ants have swarmed the meat. Apparently, they were there all along, but neither of them noticed the tiny bodies. By living their own lives without much cooking, without sugar, without worry, they neglect the little beings that already dwell inside their home.
The translations read naturally and instill in the reader the intended confusion, shock, and awe that arises from the contrasting play of interior and exterior in the original. Lucy North translates all but one story out of the collection—“Bone Meat” is translated by Lucy Lower. In certain places, the Japanese characteristics of the work come to the fore, for example: “Despite her poverty, however, the neighbors still acknowledged the old lady’s previous status as the wife of a prosperous shopkeeper: they called her ‘O-ie,’ ‘O-ie-san,’ or, in the local dialect, ‘O-e-han’*”, accompanied by a footnote explaining a particularity of the Japanese spoken in Osaka. This is one of the wondrous parts of this translation: you are really submerged into a few aspects of Japanese culture. The footnote adds additional information, but if the reader decides to ignore it, the narrative would lose nothing. There are also many terms, such as tatami, which are not explained, and their meaning can be either assumed from the context (simply as a rug) or via a search on the reader’s part (explaining the specific rug in the Japanese context). The translations can be as Japanese or as Anglophone as the reader would like, even if Japanese is present in the words in the text.
As mentioned, North translated the majority of the stories, while Lower translated only one. North’s Kono maintains a similar style, tone, and fluidity, which contrasts greatly with Lower’s Kono. Although a ten-year gap spans the original publication of the titular story and “Bone Meat” (the other stories being published in between/slightly before or after the other two), it is highly unlikely that Kono’s style changed so drastically within that time span. Lower’s translation comes off as choppy—the sentences are pointed, precise, and short—while North’s translations have a flow and one phrase often leads into the next:
Murao, however, called her “Uta-chan” whenever talking about her in private, and Fukuko naturally began to do the same thing. When Murao started using this form of address [-chan instead of -san] directly to Utako, Fukuko again followed suit. Utako, however, continued to use the somewhat more distant appellation.
She felt she would like to burn it all—the man’s things, and her own, and the place. If she too were to burn up with them, she thought, so much the better. But she merely hoped for it, and made no plans.
The first quote—from North’s translation of “Night Journey”—showcases North’s Kono, where one phrase flows into another and punctuation is used only as a grammatical necessity. On the other hand, Lower’s translation, as demonstrated in the second quote, provides a lot of pauses; the commas, em-dashes, and periods causing the short punches and choppiness mentioned earlier. By no means is Lower’s translation subpar in comparison to North’s—in fact, her style in that story matches the angry tone of the protagonist very well. It does, however, pose the question: which is truly Kono’s voice? North translates stories written in different periods of her writing and with different tones, yet the flow and narration of each story are done in the same style. At the very least, the insertion of Lower’s story reflects a difference in translation style.
It’s a shame that more of Kono Taeko’s work has not been translated into English. Upon reading this collection, I was left thirsting for more of the drama, passion, and exploration of taboo that she relates in these stories. There’s a rawness in these stories that leaves the reader feeling bare, visible, and reflective. Both of the translators capture these emotions in their renditions and, despite my preference to North’s translations over Lower’s, both succeed, albeit differently, in producing great prose. After reading, there’s no doubt that these stories will cause you to question your own inner desires, and how they relate to what you project onto your outer, public layer. Whether you strictly follow societal gender roles or break the mold with taboos like the ones presented in the work, Kono’s prose will leave you feeling exposed.
Clayton McKee is currently working on a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He works as a copy editor for Asymptote and as an outreach coordinator for Trafika Europe. He has translated various excerpts for Trafika Europe and is currently working on his first book-length translation.
*****
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