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the complete review - fiction

A Perfect Day to Be Alone

by
Aoyama Nanae

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B+ : nicely done

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "The slim work is a fitting introduction to the writer, whose tight, understated prose renders the juncture between adolescence and adulthood with humorous authenticity and tender pain. (...) There’s no tangled plot to resolve, no “ah-ha” moment of wisdom from Ginko or inspirational resolution for Chizu. There are simply the quiet revelations of one person stumbling toward self-understanding." - Kris Kosaka, The Japan Times

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       A Perfect Day to Be Alone is narrated by twenty-year-old Chizu Mita. When her mother has the opportunity to go to China as part of a teacher exchange program Chizu chooses not to accompany her and instead decides: "I'll move to Tokyo. And ... get a job". (They live in Saitama -- part of the greater Tokyo region, but not in the thick of things: it's: "like a two-hour round trip" to the capital.) Chizu's mother wants her to go to university, but Chizu has no interest in that -- "I don't want to study. I want to work. I want to make my own way in life", she explains to her mother. But Chizu also has little idea about how to go about that; she doesn't seem to have any grand ambitions, and is unsure of what she hopes for from the future. A goal she sets herself is to save a million yen by the following spring -- "it was the prospect of seeing that figure in my bank account that really brought a smile to my face" -- but even that isn't a true priority for her.
       Her mother does arrange for a place for Chizu to stay -- with Ginko Ogino, fifty years Chizu's senior, who lives alone with her cats (and her pictures of her old cats): "Whenever someone's daughter decides to move to Tokyo, she's always the one to host them until they find their feet". In five seasonal sections -- 'Spring, 'Summer', 'Autumn', Winter', 'Early Spring' -- A Perfect Day to Be Alone chronicles Chizu's life and path to tentatively 'finding her feet' over the course of a bit more than a year. It is an almost understated story, with Aoyama not letting (or forcing) Chizu to learn big lessons in dramatic episodes; instead, Chizu's life remains almost everyday, the simple struggle of a young woman taking her first steps to independent adulthood -- a slow process. So also, after living with Ginko for half a year, when she asks the old lady whether she thinks she has become more mature Ginko tells her: "More mature ? Not really".
       Chizu is in a relationship of sorts when she comes to Tokyo, but: "Yohei and I had been seeing each other for two and a half years, but we never went out on dates"; unsurprisingly, this soon fizzles out. She takes some part-time jobs and finds a new boyfriend, Fujita, but it's also a connection that doesn't fully take. Meanwhile, Ginko begins a relationship with a man, too, Hosuke.
       Chizu has a habit of pinching small items from her acquaintances, collecting them in a shoebox -- a miscellanea of keepsakes of what amount to broken connections, not least then a whole pile of stuff she takes from Fujita:

I'd take them home with me, study them carefully, then put them in the shoebox. Whenever I did, I'd take the other objects out and, as if honoring the memory of the dead, recall their former owners.
     The cap the most popular boy in my year wore to gym class. A flower-patterned eraser from the girl who used to sit in front of me. A red pen belonging to the math teacher I'd fancied. A piece of junk mail addressed to our neighbor that had been mistakenly shoved into our letter box.

You've been slacking around long enough -- don't you think it's time you actually did something ?

     "Are you not enjoying life then, Chizu ?" asked Ginko, still facing the sink.
     "Nope. Not even a little bit," I replied, but my words were drowned out by the sound of water rushing from the tap, and I don't think Ginko heard them.

- M.A.Orthofer, 16 December 2024

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Links:

• Other Press publicity page
• MacLehose Press publicity page
• Kawade Shobo Shinsha publicity page
• cass verlag publicity page
• Ediciones Urana publicity page

• Asia by the Book
• Bookmunch
• Contemporary Japanese Literature
• David's Book World
• From First Page to Last
• Glynne Walley's J-lit site
• The Japan Times
• Japanische Literatur
• Japanische Literatur
• libroscope
• Publishers Weekly
• Sam Still Reading
• Theresa Smith Writes
• Tony's Reading List

• See Index of Japanese literature
• Index of Akutagawa Prize-winning works under review

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About the Author:

       Japanese author Aoyama Nanae (青山七恵) was born in 1983.

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© 2024 the complete review

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