BUILDING WAVES
by Taeko Tomioka
Translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai
Reviewed by Jouce Nickel
First published in Japan almost thirty years ago and now translated into English this year,
Building Waves is a fictional and highly symbolic look at the social changes washing
over Japan in the early 1980s. These changes include women moving out of their traditional roles,
the expansion of homes into mountain and forest areas, and the explosive growth of car culture.
The novel opens with the first-person narrator, Kyoko, as she begins an affair with a man who
she soon concludes is a frustratingly poor conversationalist. Kyoko is a married forty-something
woman, who along with her husband has chosen not to have children. She rarely mentions her
husband or their relationship. She doesn't mention her paramour's name either, and refers to him
simply as "the man." She knows few personal details about the man, and he thus becomes a symbol
of all traditional Japanese males. There is no doubt that from the beginning she thinks of the
man as a humourless dolt, and it's a mystery why she chooses to spend the claustrophobic
first one-third of the book in cars and hotel rooms struggling to drag conversation out of him.
After Kyoko finally abandons the affair, she says "I completely forgot about the man. All I felt
was a sensation of freedom, a release from the confined space of his car and from him."
Except she doesn't really forget him, because on the next page her younger single friend Kumiko
begins an affair with the same man, who we finally learn has a name: Katsumi. Their affair soon
gets messy, as Kumiko also strikes up a relationship with Katsumi's wife, Ayako. She and Ayako join
The Veggie Club, which on paper appears to be a way to buy and share organic produce. In
practice, however, it feels like a cult, complete with obsessed devotees and members who
zealously attempt to recruit more members. Kyoko watches in horror as her friend storms
headfirst into this couple's life and it is clear that it can't end well.
The stifling atmosphere from the beginning of the book lifts in the second half, and the author
introduces an array of characters who have names and stories. As Kyoko interacts with her varied
women friends, she scatters astute observations of the role of women in Japanese culture. The
author paints a particularly sympathetic picture of Yoko, whose life is balanced on a cliff,
both in the figurative and real sense.
I have to admit that my lack of exposure to Japanese culture limits my understanding of the
symbolism in this novel. For example, the characters often go to the mountains and forests to see
new building projects, and while there they also visit archaeological excavations of ancient
Jomon sites. This is not simply a commentary of the current population's expansion and destruction
of nature, but also of their moving into areas last inhabited thousands of years ago. The author
is clearly making an important connection between the Stone Age Jomon and the modern Japanese,
but I'm not sure exactly what it is. And although I puzzled at some of the things that the
author includes (such as an amusing and detailed two-page description of the narrator's childhood
experience with roundworms) and conversely, the things she excludes (location names, for example,
are referred to as K— or Z—), I found this look at Japanese life fascinating and enlightening.
Building Waves was specially selected for the Japanese Literature Publishing Project, an endeavour
with the goal of demonstrating the richness and diversity of modern Japanese literature.