SNAKELUST REVIEW OF BOOK BY JAPANESE AUTHOR KENJI NAKAGAMI

SNAKELUST REVIEW OF BOOK BY JAPANESE AUTHOR KENJI NAKAGAMI

In this collection of short stories, Japanese author Kenji Nakagami has written about restless, tortured souls, men and women who feel doomed by uncontrollable, unchangeable circumstances.

He wrote what he knew.

Nakagami was born into Japan’s ostracized underclass, a ghettoized group forced into menial or unseemly occupations by centuries-old rigid societal rules. He grew up in a broken home alongside half-sisters and stepbrothers.

When the author was a teenager, his older brother killed himself. Nakagami struggled with his own homosexuality, closeting himself in a marriage in a futile attempt to cope. In 1992, he died of cancer at age 46.


Despite being knocked around by life – or maybe because of it – Nakagami created works of stark, fragile beauty in these seven stories. The characters are wounded, damaged people, searching for redemption, for fulfillment that eludes them.


In The Wind and the Light, the protagonist is traveling through mountains when he comes upon another man critically wounded as the result of a violent attack. He refuses to explain the origin of the broken arrows sticking from his leg or why he’s been blinded in one eye.

Though the wounded man protests, the protagonist is determined to get him to safety, to get him medical help. Soon the protagonist is haunted by the other man’s condition, reminded of the blind finches he’d raised, reminded of his brother’s death.

Nakagami explores socioeconomic forces and the restlessness of youth in the title story. Jun is a young man whose family moved out of a slum. A reformed juvenile delinquent, he runs a bar and sleeps with Kei, a girl still trying to escape the old neighborhood.

Though his family has moved up, Jun is embarrassed by their working class roots. He feels trapped, empty. Unable to find an outlet, his feelings ultimately compel him to do the unthinkable.

A Tale of a Demon is a fantastic story with fairy tale elements: a warrior on a quest, a gorgeous maiden, an horrific monster that brutally butchers human beings. Though the warrior and the maiden fall in love, the story’s uneasy tone makes it clear there’ll be no “happily ever after.”

Even so, Nakagami spins a spellbinding yarn set in an exotic countryside with breathtaking sunsets and a demon-inhabited bridge periodically littered with severed human heads.

Perhaps the most disturbing story in the book is Gravity’s Capital. Incredibly beautiful and profoundly sad, powerfully erotic and mystically spiritual, it’s a tale that will leave only the most jaded reader unmoved.

The plot is simple enough: an itinerant laborer and young woman become lovers. But he is down-to-earth, practical. He puts down no roots, makes connections with no one – until now.

She is pretty and kind but unstable. Has been haunted by religious visions since childhood. Each night she dreams she’s visited by an incubus, the spirit of a long-dead prince.

For him, she holds the promise of real, mature love. For her, he represents the promise of salvation from her torturous obsessions.

Snakelust is a collection of short stories by Kenji Nakagami, translated by Andrew Rankin (Kodansha International, $23.00).