Novel
Reconciliation
和解
Naoya Shiga · 1917
Synopsis
The narrator, a writer, lives estranged from a tyrannical father who has banished him from the family property, according to a British critic's blog; he tries to write the novel of this rupture without managing to, and his journeys take him by train between Kyoto and Tokyo. His first child dies at less than two months old, after desperate efforts to save him. The publisher Canongate presents the book as the autobiographical account of a father and son's path towards reconciliation.
Context
The narrative appeared in 1917, the very year of the reconciliation it relates. The quarrel stemmed from the father's refusal to let his son protest after the Ashio copper mine affair, the family owing part of its fortune to a mining investment, and then from his opposition to a marriage plan. The book belongs to the personal novel, in which fiction barely disguises autobiography, according to British critics, who date it to 1918. Ted Goossen gave the first English translation.
Who it is for
A short narrative, without a plot in the usual sense, for those who want to read the Japanese personal novel at its source.
Prizes and reception
Counted by the National Diet Library among the author's major works, it has appeared in English under the title Reconciliation.
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