The pine islands

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Senju, color woodcut by Hokusai , around 1830
Pilgrim hat "Matsushima ya - aa Matsushima ya ..."

Die Kieferninseln is a novel by Marion Poschmann from 2017. It is the story of a German who fled to Japan, who meets and accompanies a young Japanese man who is tired of life. The pine islands ( Matsushima ) in Sendai Bay are the destination and highlight of the trip through the country.

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A German named Gilbert Sylvester, who feels cheated by his wife, has ended up in Japan. He, a beard researcher as part of a third-party funded project, now decides, armed with the classics of Japanese literature, to deal with this country. As a beard researcher, he initially only found beardless Japanese, Tōkyō also seemed too clean and very much a tourist city. During an evening stroll he came to the main train station by chance and found a young Japanese man at the end of a platform. As it turns out, he is planning his suicide there. Gilbert dissuades the boy named Yosa Tamagotchi from doing this there and now has a job to find a better place with him.

In search of a suitable place, various places are tried and discarded: Takashimadaira, a residential area on the northern edge of Tōkyō with its sparse high-rise buildings from the post-war period, Aokigahara, a forest at the foot of Mount Fuji, a well-known destination for those who are tired of life, Senju on the edge of Tōkyō with the murky Sumida river. With Senju, in earlier times a post office, one is on the way to the north, to the “hinterland” that the poet Bashō and his predecessor Saigyō so impressively described.

On the way in Sendai Yosa Tamagotchi gets lost. Gilbert is now on the way to Matsushima alone and sings about it with quoted and self-written haiku. Before reaching Matsushima, he visits Shiogama on the Bay of the Pine Islands. The first disappointment arises: The passage “Oki no Ishi” (literally “stone by the open sea”) sung by Bashō has long since ceased to be by the sea, but in the middle of a street crossing. And with “Sue no Matsuyama” (literally “pine mountain at the end”) it looks similar. - Then it goes on to the goal, to the place Matsushima Kaigan, which is also no longer the place to get into poetry contemplatively; the aftermath of the Fukushima tsunami (without making this a big issue) can be felt too clearly.

Parallel to the course of the journey, Gilbert shows himself not only as a carer for the helpless Tamagotchi, he also reflects on his own life. It turns out that he may not have reached a top position professionally, but he has a dedicated opinion about life, such as that he can't stand “when his students whispered to themselves when they wanted to say something without accepting it say".

To deepen: Mentioned people, places and writings

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Marion Poschmann visited Japan over a period of three months and was also well prepared. As an attentive observer, she soon realized that in Japan it is important to behave in a pleasant manner. Papers handed out are gripped, for example, with both hands. And the swipe at Tanizaki's praise of the shadow with its attitude towards the woman is understandable. The young Japanese who doesn't get anything right, on the one hand, and the diligent hotel manager on the other, could function as observations on the Japanese male world. The suicide story draws attention to the actually high suicide rate caused by the high pressure to perform in Japanese society.

And even if the pine islands and their surroundings do not quite meet the expectations of Gilbert, which were inspired by Saigyō and Bashō, he found that the Japanese enthusiasm for natural phenomena, such as the splendid autumn foliage, but also the distance to Europe and memory in whose achievements enriched him.

Reviews

  • Andreas Platthaus overwrites his review in the FAZ with “Matsushima ya, aa Matsushima, Matsushima ya” and cautiously explains that according to a legend after Bashō, this haiku should have stammered with enthusiasm. Platthaus closes with the sentence that everyone should read this book twice, that is, calmly and not just at the end.
  • Alexander Cammann (Zeit-online), who visited the writer on the Baltic Sea island of Vilm, quotes the author as saying that with her novel she wanted to “induce ambiguity and create floating spaces”.
  • Tobias Lehmkuhl (Süddeutsche) comes to the conclusion that "the finely woven, filigree ramified novel is not only clever, it is also cheerful."
  • Paul Jandl (NZZ) overwrites his criticism with “A beard researcher meets a suicide” and ends with the sentence “that the German sees that he does not see. Everything is haze. But Gilbert Silvester, the lecturer from Germany, has never been as tangible to himself as he is here. "
  • Alexander Solloch (NDR Kultur) comes to the conclusion "that Poschmann tells a funny and sad and utterly wonderful story of how we wander through the world looking for a scrap of truth that covers a bit of the exposed."

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The haiku can not be found in Bashō's haiku collection.
  2. ↑ Andreas Platthaus: Everyone will read this book twice.
  3. ↑ Alexander Cammann: Dreams of a spirit seer
  4. ↑ Tobias Lehmkuhl: The moon in the teacup.
  5. ↑ A beard researcher meets a suicide
  6. ↑ Alexander Solloch: The project of turning away.

expenditure

See also

Considerations on Japan can also be found in:

literature

  • Kon Eizō (Ed.): Bashō kushū . [Bashō Haiku Complete Edition] Shinchō shuppan, 1982.
  • Bashō: The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Sketches . Penguin Classics, 1965.
  • Bashō: On narrow paths through the hinterland . Translated from Japanese with an introduction and annotations by GS Dombrady. Reference library Dieterich. 5th edition Mainz 2014. ISBN 978-3-87162-075-1 .
  • Saigyō: Poems from the Bergklause. Sankashu . Translated from the Japanese, with commentary and annotations by Ekkehard May. Reference library Dieterich. Mainz 2018. ISBN 978-3-87162-098-0 .