Kidō Okamoto

Fiica negustorului de sake

Nona G

From time to time, I try to read some kind of Japanese literature, although I don't really resonate with it. To this day, I have not found something I like. The cultural differences are too much and these books rarely give me the impulse to actually research the things they talk about.

This short story book reminds me of Sherlock Holmes, but not necessarily in a good way. They are detective stories which follow different crimes that take place sometime in the 1800s. They should be a fast read, but it took me a while particularly because of the cultural aspects that I did not necessarily understand. The author includes lots of names, geographical denominations, temples, deities, names of poets and writings, mythological references - too many, I would say, for me at least, that it was hard to keep track of everything, so at times I had to go back and reread. I'm sure this has to do with my lack of knowledge when it comes to Japanese culture, but it just took much of the enjoyment from the book.

My unfamiliarity with Japan made me lose track of characters (who are sometimes named by their full name, sometimes by nicknames). Also, the names all blended together at some point, because they all look the same - all women receive names starting with "O", for example. I don't think people should take into account all possible readers from all parts of the world when writing, of course, but that's the main reason why I could not get immersed in this book as much as I wanted.

My other complaint is that the detective's thought process is not really described. He solves all crimes and tells the story without really going into details regarding the reasoning behind the answer. There's a lot of stalking going on and just randomly discovering things, with very few logical thinking, so the comparison to Sherlock really stops at "they are both detectives". I was lacking the suspense which normally accompanies detective stories and, to be honest, there were moments when I didn't think the "bad guys" were really bad guys - some of the customs of the era looked strange to me. As I said... cultural differences.

This book is nice for people who want to get acquainted to Japanese culture of the 1800s, but I just couldn't get into it. It's exotic, yes, and with a lot of wikipedia research, I might have had a different experience, but I could not find the motivation to do that research.

Fiica negustorului de sake

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