Mysterious Setting - Abe Kazushige

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Mysterious Setting

by
Abe Kazushige

general information | our review | links | about the author

Title:	Mysterious Setting
Author:	Abe Kazushige
Genre:	Novel
Written:	2006 (Eng. 2024)
Length:	222 pages
Original in:	Japanese
Availability:	Mysterious Setting - US
	Mysterious Setting - UK
	Mysterious Setting - Canada

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

Japanese titles: ミステリアス・セッティング
Translated by Michael Emmerich

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Our Assessment:

B+ : unusual but quite effective mix of a story

See our review for fuller assessment.

The complete review's Review:

       Mysterious Setting begins and ends with a narrator recalling his youth and an old man in a park who would tell him and his friends stories. The man's tales were largely forgettable -- "by and large, they were pretty dull" -- but the narrator remembers one of them very clearly, and it is this story that makes up the bulk of the novel.
       The story is one that took place decades earlier -- "back when I was in my teens", the old man explains. It is about someone whom the old man calls Shiori, a pretty hapless girl, easily taken advantage of and a poor judge of character. She is also passionately musical -- and: "from the time she was young, whenever a song touched her she would start singing along". Unfortunately, she is completely tone deaf, so her singing is awful; realizing this -- and concerned about some of what happens when she can't help but break out in song -- she tries to keep herself in check and not sing in public.
       When she learns the word 'troubadour' she thinks she has found her calling. If she can't perform, she will be lyricist, and live as a troubadour, "a troubadour who couldn't sing". After graduating from high school she goes to Tokyo, enrolling at a music school to study songwriting, pursuing her dream; nevertheless:

Though her new environment allowed her to devote herself to her songs, Shiori felt as depressed as before. She had left home eager to push bravely on towards her dreams, but there were hurdles everywhere. In fact, reality would soon pummel her with a cruelty beyond anything she had experienced before.

       While at home, Shiori was helped some by the tough love of her younger but much more worldly-wise sister Nozomi, who tries to watch out for her some. In Tokyo she's left more on her own -- and taken advantage of, "as one of those young women who just can't say no, who would accede to any request as long as it was aggressive enough". Among the few connections she does make is via "an online forum for 'email buddies'". One of those she corresponds with is an apparently sickly high school student calling himself Z. who has taken the semester off from school and sits at home; the other is a foreigner named Manuel, who is in a band, and whom she eventually meets in person -- and she is soon easily drawn into the band's orbit.
       Despite Z.'s warnings -- "I don't think you ought to be too trusting. Not if you don't want to mess things up with people like you did in high school" -- Shiori can't help herself. The bandmates see her as an easy mark, with only Manuel looking out for her some -- but it is Manuel that then leaves her with an outsize (beyond all conceivable proportions) burden to deal with.
       What was mostly a somewhat bleak story of a girl who deludes herself and tries her best but doesn't seem to be able to catch a break turns into something of an action thriller, complete with race against the clock. It also ultimately does come full circle, with an explanation for the framing device, and the original narrator's description of him and his friends being drawn to this distant park -- an hour away from their homes -- which isn't really much more than a huge vacant field, and that sense of: "Something that called us all there, irresistibly. To that park".
       Before the novel proper begins, there are three short pages of explanation and epigraph. The first concerns the title, explaining what a 'Mysterious Setting' is, the jewelry-making technique pioneered by Van Cleef & Arpels, whereby jewels are set "without the gold or platinum prongs that typically hold stones in place" -- a technique also mentioned in the novel itself then, and of course also underlying the whole story of Shiori.
       The other two introductory bits are a short Asahi Shinbun/Reuters report -- 'Arab Newspaper says Al-Qaeda Bought Nuclear Weapons from Ukraine in 1998' -- and another (unattributed) press-clipping-like paragraph, headlined: 'Where are the Suitcase Nukes Now ?' So from the beginning there's the suggestion of where this all might be going .....
       Z., the 'email buddy' Shiori never meets in person, describes reading her emails: "I suppose you could say, like a serialized novel". Limited in the in-person connections she is able to make in life, Shiori found an outlet in sharing her innermost thoughts and concerns, and writing about her life, past and present, to the two online friends she makes. They are a receptive audience, and well-meaning enough, but both also ultimately fail her -- Manuel in getting her involved with his band, for whom she just becomes a gofer to be taken advantage of, as well as then burdening her with the most terrible of burdens, and Z. in not being able to help her out fully at the most critical time.
       Shiori's story is in many ways a bleak one, though at least it doesn't sink into simply a wallow of awfulness because she remains if not exactly upbeat so at least hopeful, pushing on rather than simply sinking into the misery that is her life. Abe then pushes the story to near absurdity, but the character has been so well-grounded that even the story's large and unlikely turn can seem almost plausible -- the whole helped also by the framing device and background, which ground it even more firmly.
       Shiori' sad sack story can make for a bit heavy going at times, but there's enough else to Mysterious Setting to make it consistently compelling and ultimately a success -- a rather odd but also strangely haunting one.

- M.A.Orthofer, 8 September 2024

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Links:

Mysterious Setting:

Pushkin Press publicity page
Asahi publicity page
Kodansha publicity page

Reviews:

Other books by Abe Kazushige under review:

Nipponia Nippon

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Japanese literature
Other books from Pushkin Press under review

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About the Author:

Japanese author Abe Kazushige (阿部和重) was born in 1968.

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