Weasels in the Attic: Hiroko Oyamada

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Home » Japan » Hiroko Oyamada » いたちなく (Weasels in the Attic) Hiroko Oyamada: いたちなく (Weasels in the Attic) Weasels reads differently than her earlier work in English. The sentences are shorter. There are far more paragraph breaks. And while still surreal, the tone of the novella is far less haunted. The overall effect is a book that is easier to read than Oyamada’s other titles. Some parts of the country won’t be that prone to seeing these animals around. However, if you are in rural Scotland you may have an increased chance of being affected by them. If you have spotted droppings in your attic or you suspect you might have seen either a stoat or a weasel in or near your home, you should get in touch to see whether we can help. Larger weasels, like the long-tailed weasel that’s found in North America, and the tropical weasel that inhabits South America have been documented to grow between 10 and 12 inches in length. History China Translation India Japan Hong Kong Biography Short stories Memoir Current affairs Historical fiction Korea Travel-writing South Asia Immigration Geopolitics Southeast Asia Russia WW2 Middle East Culture Central Asia Economics International relations Society Singapore Art Politics Japanese Iran Literary history Philippines Religion Turkey SE Asia Business Photography Colonialism Indonesia Taiwan Crime Chinese Essays Illustrated Islam Recent articles

BOOK REVIEW: WEASELS IN THE ATTIC (2022) BY HIROKO OYAMADA

Despite his desire for a child, the narrator later seems surprised to see how fatherhood has changed his friend. When Yoko says that Saiki “does everything from morning to evening” except feed the baby, the narrator exclaims, “Wait, so he changes her diapers?” “The Saiki I knew wasn’t the type who voluntarily took care of any child—even his own. I was pretty sure he didn’t like kids,” he comments, possibly jealous, given that unlike Saiki he does like children and, when he was younger, helped take care of his sisters’ children, playing with them and singing them lullabies. The narrator then laughs when Saiki, speaking to his baby daughter, refers to himself as “dada.” The narrator does not say whether his surprise is that any man should claim such a name for himself or that Saiki in particular is claiming this name. As for Saiki, he views the name practically: “It’s too hard for her to say anything else. I’m going to be ‘dada’ until she can actually talk.” The translation is probably fine, but I can't help feeling like it 's done by someone who doesn't have an ear for music. Dialogue translated from Japanese to English loses a lot of nuance, and it's difficult to attribute much thought and depth to characters. Here's an example of something that made me cringe: there are certain very common daily phrases that should just be put in italics, such as when you're announcing you've arrived at your front door Tadaima! without translating it as "Uh, I'm home." I hope you agree. What have I contemplated though? I'm not sure I'm getting it. This sounds like a collection of carelessly chosen phrases that failed to convey any figurative meaning. Similar to the denouement —there have been numerous interpretive deconstructions because it was so unconstrained, consequently made the novella appears to be as obscure as its subject matter. Is it about patriarchy? motherhood? or simply weasels in the attic? I guess I'll never catch it.The Hole is narrated by Asa, who is so indistinguishable from The Factory’s shredder that she might as well be the same person. Nearly thirty, Asa quits her job as a temporary worker when her husband is transferred to a branch office in the countryside not far from his parents’ home. Or homes—his mother owns and rents out the house next door. The previous tenants have just left, she informs her son. A rent-free house, next to the in-laws: What could go wrong?

Weasels in the Attic | The Modern Novel Oyamada: Weasels in the Attic | The Modern Novel

Now the typical weasels that you may be thinking about are only slightly bigger. Take the long-tailed weasel or the tropical weasel. On the low end, their weight can be around 3 ounces, while becoming as heavy as 12 ounces. Despite its elements of surrealism and the understated but constant senses of uneasiness it manages to convey, I find the writing a tad too sparse to be effective. If you are simply trying to keep them away from your property, set up an exclusion, and save yourself from their meat-eating desire. What Are Weasels Afraid Of?The most notable of all is the Least Weasel. It weighs approximately one ounce. This is the most notable weasel because it is the smallest carnivore in the world, according to Animal Diversity Web . The third story is more or less the same scenario, only a bit later. Yoko, Saiki’s wife, has had a baby, with the help of the narrator’s wife. This time we see that Saiki has once again shown an interest in fish and now has several fish tanks with discus fish and one with the rare bonytongue. As it is snowing, the narrator and his wife have to spend the night and they sleep in the room with the fish tanks. Bonytongues can jump three feet. A similar discussion around gendered housework is also seen in “The Hole”. Oyamada’s earlier novel focuses on a young woman called Asa, whose husband’s job is transferred to the countryside, forcing her to leave her career behind and become a housewife. Now having no way to support herself or any activities other than cooking and cleaning to fill her time, Asa gets swept away in a surreal world of smiling cat-like creatures and mysterious human-sized holes in the ground. In “The Hole”, it is unclear to the reader what is real or not real, but the one constant throughout is that Asa is now unemployed and must take care of the house through domestic labour, again reinforcing the unfairness of the gender binary in housework in Japan. But mainly, for me, the problem is that the book is poorly written. The kind of writing failure I have in mind is not an effect of translation, and it isn't a matter of cultural differences. I know this because the issues I have in mind are problems in narration. This is just poor writing. The English-language debut of one of Japan’s most exciting new writers, The Factory follows three workers at a sprawling industrial factory. Each worker focuses intently on the specific task they’ve been assigned: one shreds paper, one proofreads documents, and another studies the moss growing all over the expansive grounds. But their lives slowly become governed by their work—days take on a strange logic and momentum, and little by little, the margins of reality seem to be dissolving: Where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin? What’s going on with the strange animals here? And after a while—it could be weeks or years—the three workers struggle to answer the most basic question: What am I doing here?