Yo Hemmi

Being short fiction from a Japanese journalist and activist. Included are two novellas and a short story. The best piece to me was the story, which concerns itself with two prostitutes, their procurer, and a john making their way across a moody Vietnamese nightscape in pedal rickshaws. The title novella is about a man who encounters a leaky shoplifter who, it seems, when she finds herself filled with fluid, can drain it only by committing a forbidden act, and he convinces her that it would be more desirable for her to have carnal relations with him than to shoplift. The better of the two novellas related the doings of a messy family whose tumbledown house and neglected pets are slowly improved by a mysterious stranger, a sort of male Mary Poppins, who remodels and cleans up their house, heals their pets, and relieves the teenagers' ennui. These stories were reasonably entertaining, but meseems they fell somewhat short of being in any way extraordinary.… (mehr)