Book Review

The Glass Slipper and Other Stories

By Shotaro Yasuoka

Published by Dalkey Archive Press

Set in Japan in the years before, during and after the Second World War, this collection of quietly engaging short stories focuses principally on young men (who may or may not bear any resemblance to the author).

There are some ostensible distinctions between the protagonists of each story, but these aren’t really more than surface variations, and don’t add up to much more than a different name and a different location. The same (male) voice is essentially consistent throughout: a directionless, vaguely dissatisfied youth with no deep attachments to other people or more than half-formed ideas about life.

Usually in their first jobs, as yet unmarried, cut adrift from their earliest moorings, they have no firm attachments elsewhere, or even particularly strong inclinations. They are all marked by a passivity, and a tendency to allow events to run their course – irrespective of whether this is to their detriment, or (perhaps more poignantly) anyone else’s.

And while we’re familiar with the apathetic, drifting youth in Western literature, there’s often an obvious passion or anger – or, at any rate, the profound yearning to feel such things – that appears absent from Yasuoka’s protagonists. The title story, ostensibly about a love affair, never seems to touch any real depth of desire. The young students of ‘The King’s Ears’ are idly cruel to each other, and it ends with potentially real tragedy, and yet there is never a sense that this is the result of anything other than indolence.

This certainly isn’t a criticism, however. There’s a compelling quality to the indistinct, unformed character of each protagonist, particularly given their young ages (for the most part they are students, or slightly older). And, whilst they may not conform to a familiar archetype, the deadening haze of inactivity that at times threatens to engulf them feels recognisable enough (at least to this reviewer).

It also means that when real emotion surfaces, it makes a considerable impact – in particular in ‘The Sword Dance’, where the protagonist finds the image of that very dance provokes memories of his father, and moves him to tears. It’s these moments, that for the characters touch on unexpected depths, that also reveal the hidden layers of meaning within the stories.

Reviewed by Rosa Anderson, Booktrust Literature Promotions Officer

Translator: Royall Tyler