James Nicoll Reviews

Hiromi Kawakami’s The Briefcase is a stand-alone¹ slice-of-life romance novel. Translation is by Allison Markin Powell.

Thirty-eight-year-old office worker Tsukiko Omachi lives alone. It’s by pure chance that she encounters a near-stranger whom she only barely recognizes from her long-ago school days. As a result, their lives are transformed.

Tsukiko didn’t pay attention in Japanese class. She had long ago forgotten Harutsuna Matsumoto’s name, if indeed she ever knew it. Instead, Tsukiko thinks of Harutsuna as ​“Sensei”. Or she would, if she ever thought about him.

Tsukiko and Sensei might have continued their separate paths. Asked for their orders, both order the exact same meal within the hearing of the other. This coincidence is sufficient for the pair to take note of each other. Sensei recognizes his former student and with some prompting, Tsukiko recognizes Sensei… even if she can’t remember his name.

Having become reacquainted, Tsukiko and the much older (and as far as Tsukiko knows, widowed) Sensei become companions of a sort. If circumstances facilitate it, they spend evenings eating and drinking together. If they don’t see each other for a while, neither seems much bothered by the other’s absence. Certainly, there is no deep connection between former teacher and former student and one can surely never develop.

Right?

~oOo~

You might think that I read this book as a refreshing change of pace from all the speculative fiction I consume2. Actually, I selected Kawakami to read because I greatly enjoyed her spec-fic work Under the Eye of the Big Bird and wanted to read more spec-fic by this author. However, I then confused the author’s The Parade, which seemed to at least borderline spec-fic, with The Briefcase, which is not. There’s a lesson here, which is that titles can have two words, but if even one word is different, there’s a good chance that the titles denote different books.

Thanks to a distaste for public displays and a desire to avoid potentially awkward conversations, characters in many Japanese works rely on subtext and circumlocution. As a result, these characters could teach masterclasses in miscommunication and needlessly deferred relationships. It’s easy to see why some cultures have matchmakers. Without such services, the likely outcome is extinction, since so few people are so bold as to make eye contact, let alone forthright declarations of mild tolerance³.

Tsukiko greatly facilitates the languorous pace of the relationship thanks to the fact that she is somewhat introspective, but not very insightful. Perhaps she actively avoids insight, for the same reason that people avoid blunt conversation. As for what’s going in Sensei’s mind, we only have Tsukiko’s perspective.

Still, the journey can be as enjoyable as the destination. As detailed by Kawakami’s skilled pen, readers will enjoy Tsukiko and Sensei’s drunkard’s walk from drinking companions to something more.

I didn’t seek out a change of pace but that’s what I got. Lucky for me it was so enjoyable.

The Briefcase is available here (Counterpoint Press), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), and here (Chapters-Indigo).

I did not find The Briefcase at either Bookshop UK or Words Worth Books.

1: Well, except the author’s The Parade seems to feature characters with the same names, which is why I spent a good chunk of The Briefcase wondering when the tengu were going to appear.

2: This book not being spec-fic and never mentioning the US, I’ve found it quite difficult to find a way to insert ​“USA delenda est” into the review. But I will keep at it until the orange buffoon and his supporters on both sides of the aisle stop talking about annexing Canada ☹ 

3: This is, of course, preferable to my own culture’s approach to courtship, which if our songs are any guide, consists mostly of stalking, domestic violence, and murder, as well as armed robbery and being completely astonished that the police have somehow solved the crime the commission of which the protagonist has been loudly proclaiming in song.