Calling You, by Otsu-Ichi

[rachelmanija]

Three fantasy novellettes, plus illustrations by Miyako Hasami. (Prose novellettes, not manga.)

Click here to get it from Amazon: Calling You (Novel)

The first, "Calling You," was my favorite. A lonely girl who doesn't have a cell phone because no one would ever call her imagines herself one... and one day, it rings. The working out of this conceit is clever and, despite what I at first saw as an overly melodramatic twist, quite moving.

"Kiz/Kids," about two lonely kids in a special ed class, didn't grab me as much as the other two despite featuring one of my favorite tropes, psychic powers. I did enjoy the gruesomely logical approach the kids take toward exploring the limits of the power, which is to move injuries from another person onto the psychic kid's body.

In "Flower Song," the narrator recovers in a hospital from a tragic train crash, and there discovers a flower with a woman's face. I liked the slow movement from numbed stasis to connection and healing, and how the flower isn't quite what it first seems to be. I'm not sure if the very ending was supposed to be as surprising as I found it...

ETA: If you speak Japanese and don't mind being spoiled, please read the comments and help us out!



I assumed the narrator was male because it never occurred to me that shared hospital rooms could be co-ed, and the roommates are male. Am I crazy? Are co-ed hospital rooms common in Japan or even in the US, and I just didn't know? Or was that a completely unlikely circumstance intended to create a surprise gender twist at the end?

Comments

[rilina.livejournal.com]

I also assumed the narrator was male--I wonder how marked the gender would have been (or not been) in the original Japanese?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Now that I think about it, I think it couldn't have been ambiguous in Japanese, because "I" and "you" are gendered - it must have either only been ambiguous in English, or else the author was clearly being deliberately tricky.

The illustrations are definitely androgynous.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Re-phrased for spoilers:

estara wrote: They could have [used the person's name and no pronouns.]

I don't think so, though, because it was in the first person in English. I don't think the narrator's name is ever revealed.

[estara.livejournal.com]

Oh sorry, I didn't think that was a spoiler any longer. My mistake.

[anachred.livejournal.com]

"'I' and 'you' are gendered"

This is not really true. Especially in writing, "watashi" could be used by a man, though they don't use "I" and "you" the way we do. They drop it a lot.

It seems strange to me that the hospital room would be co-ed. Not impossible, but strange.

Even back in the bad TB days I think they had separate rooms, if not wards, necessarily. I read a memoir in Japanese by a Japanese author, so it's a bit fuzzy, but I'm sure she was rooming with women, because of the way she describes relationships with men taking place. This is in WWII days, or thereabouts.

[anachred.livejournal.com]

{Clarification: men don't use "watashi" really, but in speech in *general* the Japanese don't use "I" or "you" the fastidious way we do in English.}

[homasse.livejournal.com]

men don't use "watashi" really

Yes, they do--they do in polite situations where using "ore" or "boku" would be inappropriate. Where I lived in Gunma, NO ONE used "boku" unless it was a kid reciting something for school (same kids used "ore" as soon as they were back to normal), so men's choices were "ore" or "watashi"--so men being polite dropped "ore" and used "watashi" frequently.

[anachred.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I meant to say that they drop it completely a lot. I realized that was unclear and tried to clarify, guess I didn't do a good job. ^_^

Thanks for the catch!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'd forgotten that men also use watashi.

[homasse.livejournal.com]

I was in a Japanese hospital for 5 weeks, and the rooms are most definitely separated--the male patients weren't even supposed to go into the women's rooms (but we could go into theirs--or maybe it wasn't really enforced as much with us women).

[snarp]

"I" is only sorta gendered - "watashi," the "feminine" form, can also be used by guys, and I know a girl who regularly uses "boku," the male form, though that's uncommon. And you're not necessarily going to be using the first person pronoun much anyway - it's not needed as often as in English. So yeah, it's possible to write something in the first person without revealing gender if you're careful.

(An example (spoiler for all of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou): For the entire series, we never get any indication of what Owner's gender is, including through his/her letter(s).

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[oracne.livejournal.com]

BTW, did you want to borrow Steven Barnes' LION'S BLOOD, or did you already have that one? I dug it out of its box back when you read that other book of his.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

It's out in paperback, so I'll probably just buy it. But thanks!

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

It's definitely possible to write a story in first person that is entirely ambiguous. Pronouns give some hint, but can be ambiguous since there are many, many pronouns and only some of them are specifically gendered and even those are sometimes used by the opposite sex (and watashi is not female; it's neutral in polite speech, just women tend to use it (or more often atashi) even in more casual speech), plus pronouns are just really rarely used in Japanese, period. The subject is usually left off because it's implied.

Now I'm really curious as to what the original was like. I'm going to try and find the book in Japanese.

[homasse.livejournal.com]

I read it in Japanese--had a huge, flailing, OMG LOVE post about it when I discovered "Calling You", and recently read "Flower Song."

Every Otsu-ichi story I've read so far has been written in first person, and I boggled at Flower Song, because it was a massive plot-twist; there was no indication that the narrator wasn't male...or indication that anyone in that hospital room wasn't, because no pronouns were used for them and everyone was [family name]-san. The narrator used "watashi," but that didn't strike me as particularly masculine or feminine--probably because of the illustrations, maybe, as well as lack of feminine (or masculine) endings in anyone's speech. I was gobsmacked when I hit the end and was like, "Wait, WHAT?!"

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! That's exactly what I wanted to know.

[octopedingenue]

I have to go find your OMG LOVE post now! I haven't read Calling You yet but I read Goth (book/manga) last October and it has EATEN MY BRAIN. Zoo is coming out in English from Haikasoru* later this year. I am excited!


*Haikasoru = High Castle, because Viz = DORKS

[homasse.livejournal.com]

It was a while back--at least a year and a half, maybe, since I was still in language school when I read it (I looked for it and couldn't find it). "Calling You" was the story that got me reading Otsu-ichi, and I have almost all of his books now and have read three or four. Definitely read "Calling You"--I loved it so, so much and started translating "Happiness is in the Shape of a Kitten" from the "Ushinawareru Monogatari" collection on my lj, but stopped due to lack of time.

"Zoo" is really, really good (I've read Zoo 1 and have just started Zoo 2), but OMFG DEPRESSING. The first two stories had me going D: the whole time, especially the first one (but then, I react badly to child abuse/child neglect stories).

Goth is next or second to next on my list of his stuff to read (the book ahead of it is a short collection of short stories, and I've already read half of them in other collections) after Zoo 2.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Uh, I think I need to read this story thoroughly to make sense of it. O_o The narrator does use the pronoun watashi, which would make me think maybe female, but not enough to be 100% sure. However, not far into the story, there is a paragraph where Satomi comes to visit, and the narrator says they knew Satomi since they were children, but the actual words are "since we were a little boy and a little girl". It then says that it was unusual for boys and girls to play together. Satomi is a girls' name, so therefore the one who was a little boy must be the narrator.

So yeah. Skimming is obviously not going to solve the mystery here. XD

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Interesting, thanks! In the English version, the narrator is definitely revealed as a woman in the end.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read the very end first and saw the mother/daughter thing, so this is all very confusing. XD

[homasse.livejournal.com]

Ditto in the Japanese. Til then, I thought the narrator--and everyone in the hospital room with him--was a man.

[homasse.livejournal.com]

Not only that, the writer does things like saying Satomi went with them out fishing and bug-hunting (stereotypically 'male' activities) and so ended up tanned, but now was pale and beautiful. So yeah, definitely setting Satomi up as a woman. Especially since Satomi always uses polite speech.

[octopedingenue]

Yay, I'm glad this one was good! I haven't read it yet but have more incentive now to buy it.

Please read GOTH (book/manga) so I can have another person to flail about it with!