Yoshio Aramaki

I stumbled upon Aramaki’s “Soft Clocks” short story in the Big Book of Science Fiction Anthology and was favorably impressed. The integration of Dali’s motifs with a science fiction setting and fantastical story meshed well in my mind. It was clever and compact storytelling. So I searched out the only other thing of Aramaki’s in English available, this so-called masterpiece modeled after Bosch. I was impressed at first by a lot of the themes and descriptions, but as the book wore on, I began to wonder why it was considered so great. Certainly, “Soft Clocks” is better, I thought. I think the use of the present tense is a result of a direct translation from the Japanese. I don’t much care for the translation work on this book, since I think it lacks some of the artfulness of “Soft Clocks,” as if the author’s style got washed out in a more literal interpretation. I believe it is a convention to translate the present tense narration of Japanese into Past tense English – since a huge majority of English language literature is narrated in past tense. For some reason the translator violates this rule. But that wouldn’t be enough to dismiss this novel. It contains some vivid imagery – not a result of the word choice but a result of the strong backbone of surrealism underlying the novel. I fail to see much connection to Bosch, except for the name-dropping that occurs on almost every page. The author indulges in weird mixtures of names – mingling Gilgeas with Darko Dachilko, and Barbara, Martha, Tantra, Loulan, Parnassus, Amalia, Serena, Abir, Ellen, Hoffman? It was as if he could not decide what sort of name to use or was trying to make abstruse references with each of them. There is a reverential attitude toward the divinely inspired Hieronymous Bosch throughout the novel, but very little exploration of the themes of salvation through the word of God. Instead Aramaki blatantly rejects Bosch’s vision for the fate of man separated by God and posits something far more disturbing. I am fine with Aramaki’s eccentric novelistic choices, and he can think what he wants about the unsaved souls of men, but he should have fleshed out this novel more, cut some of the extraneous scenes and focused it down to its essential theories. He tried to do too much at once, and though it’s interesting at times, it’s really messy overall.
I do know I will be reading anything else of Aramaki’s that makes it into English. It’s pretty obvious that there is a vast body of Science fiction in Japanese and Chinese waiting to be unearthed in Western languages.
I think Aramaki’s military fiction series probably won’t be as interesting as this novel, but I would still like to see them translated. Japanese science fiction, in my opinion is uniquely fascinating, if a little inconsistent.… (meer)

** I received an advance reading copy of this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway. **
More of a 2.5 star than a 3 but I'll be generous!

I'm still not entirely sure what it is I just finished reading. The book is dystopian and fantastical and so dreamlike that it is hard to hold on to the story at times. A very surreal post-apocalyptic novel following a young man as he explores the secrets of his world, his religion, his culture and the universe. While I did for the most part enjoy this book (while remaining very, very confused most of the time!), I did not enjoy the negative portrayals and lack of real description of the few females in the book. They seemed to exist only to provide temptation and sex to the male characters. Honestly, the book would have been much better if they had been left out entirely as they seemed to add nothing of merit to the novel. Just side-stories of tempting the main character into breaking his rather undefined vows. Still, as I said, I did mostly enjoy the book. I do wish the translation had been better. At least I hope it's the translation that led to some of the clunky and poorly put-together sentences!… (meer)