Senji Kuroi

“Life in the Cul-de-Sac” is a novel told in a series of twelve connected stories about four families that all take place in a suburban Tokyo cul-de-sac. This is not a spacious cul-de-sac as one would find it in the US; these houses are close together, the yards unfenced, everything is cramped together. One would think that the families would interact and be aware of each others business, but they might as well exist in bubbles. Each family lives alone with their own problems, interacting with the neighbors in only the most superficial ways.

Each of the families grapples with how Japanese society is changing. One middle-aged couple finds themselves separated because his employer has relocated him, but she refuses to leave the house they raised their children in. One couple with a teenage son deals with his insistence on living his own life, rather than showing respect to his parents. One family seems haunted, living in a new house constructed over the spot where the house he grew up in was, seeing things that were there before, a palimpsest of architecture. The final couple is younger; the husband is self employed, the wife refuses to have children, dressing up a pet raccoon (or a stuffed animal; I was never entirely sure which it was) and finding work outside the home herself. All of the adults seem to be alone and isolated. At times they get glimpses of each other; through the trees and shrubs that bound the properties, through open windows. They wonder what is happening, but do not ask.

The stories span several years. Nothing dramatic happens, but there is a lot of strong emotion. At times, there is a touch of surrealism. The stories are bleak but compelling. Kuroi has scratched the hard surfaces of the everyday people and shown us the troubles and emotions that lie beneath, hidden by civility. The women come off as stronger characters than the men; while the men see to just follow the current of life where ever it takes them, the women make decisions and stick by them. That was a first for me in Japanese literature; most of the Japanese authors I’ve read stick to the male POV! Despite being so much about everyday life, this book is creepy in an odd way. I very much liked it.… (mehr)

[Life in the Cul-de-Sac] depicts the lives of 5 'typical' Japanese families living in a cul-de-sac in Tokyo in the mid-1980's: a recently married couple, a family with young children, a family with teenagers and a mother-in-law, a couple nearing retirement, whose children are grown, and an elderly couple.

The book is structured as a series of interconnected stories (in fact it first appeared in serial form). This structure is particularly appropriate since each family is isolated from the other families, and family members are isolated from each other, all to a greater or lesser degree. The characters speculate as to what is going on with the other families, and are often not aware of what is going on with their own family members. Some of their guesses are correct, some not, but there are huge gaps in what each character knows about the other characters. Only we, as the readers, have a clearer glimpse of the circumstances of life in the cul-de-sac as a whole.

As the translator notes, the novel depicts the 'fragility of the nuclear family and a pervading sense of anxiety just below the surface of daily life,,,' The characters are sympathetic, and their stories are interesting and deal with some of the major social issues prevailing in Japan at that time: rising unemployment, care of the elderly, the crumbling of parental authority, the changing roles of women, and the loss of community… (mehr)