Book Review
Title: Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami
Genre: Romance, Literary Fiction
Rating: 4 Stars
I didn’t know much about Strange Weather in Tokyo apart from it was a romance following an age gap relationship which is something that always grabs my attention. We are following Tsukiko as she meets her once high school teacher, Harutsuna Matsumoto in a bar one evening. Please bear in mind that in this story Tsukiko is 37 and Harutsuna only called Sensei in the novel is 67. We get to see Tsukiko and Sensei get to know each other as adults although it is clear that Sensei remembers a lot more about Tsukiko than she does about him. At first it is just friendship and companionship as Sensei’s wife left him about 15 years before, so they just enjoy being around each other when they are both at the local bar. While Tsukiko does occasionally end their drinking sprees at Sensei’s home she never stays the night and nothing romantic happens at all. Although after a while she finds herself missing his presence when he isn’t around and when they have a strange falling out over baseball she realises how much she misses him ultimately giving in first. We get to see them take several outings together although neither says that these are dates but they do feel like them ranging from a trip to the market to mushroom hunting in the mountains. Getting to know both Tsukiko and Sensei was interesting as we are always seeing him through her perspective which is relatively clear as sometimes she sees him as her old teacher, the next an old man and the next a suave gentleman she greatly admires.
As the months pass, we see the friendship trying to blossom into something more than that but it never does, it could be due to Tsukiko’s asexual-like tendencies where she doesn’t really experience sexual desires or longing and has a general dislike for anything to do with that or it could be due to the fact that Sensei is very old fashioned and Tsukiko might be getting the hints he is putting out there i.e., the various outings, visits to his home etc. However, when he invites her to a cherry blossom viewing party she reconnects with Takashi and ends up agreeing to go on a date with him, not because she particularly wants to but because Sensei is off giving all his attention to another women, a former teacher too and she is jealous even if she doesn’t realise it. After this she and Sensei don’t see much of each other for months and they definitely don’t discuss the cherry blossom viewing party. By May, they get the chance to meet up and talk again where Tsukiko is going on another date with Takashi much to the surprise of Sensei and he seems a little jealous himself but some of her feeling towards the other teacher are known when she asks him subtle questions but we know Sensei definitely picked up on her true intentions. It seems like their friendship is trying to develop and change but neither really wants to let go of the way they have been doing things as both like their habits and routines to be very constrained and narrow because it means that things don’t change suddenly. However, we can feel that the relationship is on the verge of changing into something truly romantic it just needs that little push to get it there.
Surprisingly as time passes Tsukiko is the first one to realise her feelings and express them to Sensei although it seems like he isn’t taking her seriously at first. However, after going on a trip together and Tsukiko falling asleep next to Sensei seems to wake him up to the fact that her feelings for him are real as even when she flees into her room after seeing where she has been sleeping she returns to Sensei room and continues to sleep next to him. We get to see the couple go on several dates before making their relationship official but throughout all of this Tsukiko has been worried as they haven’t had a sexual relationship yet and she decides to bring it up and they speak frankly about it. Sensei confesses that it has been many years since his wife left him and he hasn’t been with anyone else, so he is concerned that he might not be able to have a sexual relationship with Tsukiko. In response to this she takes everything in stride reassuring him that they can try and that their own pace but she fails to mentions he is one of the few men in her life that she has tolerated a sexual touch from. By the time they do develop a sexual relationship for the first time both realise that they have been in love with the other for some time and it is beautiful to see. However, we soon learn from Tsukiko that they only had three years together before Sensei passes away which was heart-breaking as they were perfect for each other. In the aftermath of losing Sensei, Tsukiko finds herself talking to him even though he isn’t present anymore hoping to see him again one day and I have a feeling that Tsukiko might live out the rest of her life the way she did before Sensei, alone because she can’t really handle people who aren’t like her which Sensei was. There is also the bonus story, Parade, at the back of my edition so I am going to put my thoughts on that here before wrapping everything up.
The story of Parade is essentially Tsukiko telling Sensei about two tengu that attached themselves to her when she was a child and how she felt and perceived the world during that time and how it might be possible that the tengu are still with her today we just don’t know. Overall, Strange Weather in Tokyo was an interesting romance novel to read and I will definitely be reading more from Kawakami in this future but for those not accustomed to Japanese literature it may take some getting used to as a lot of questions are left unanswered on purpose and other points of the novel are left intentionally vague for the reader to fill in with their own ideas. I’d still highly recommend this novel as it is less than 200 pages long and can be read in a single sitting.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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