The Night of Baba Yaga

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The Night of Baba Yaga

by
Otani Akira

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

Title:	The Night of Baba Yaga
Author:	Otani Akira
Genre:	Novel
Written:	2020 (Eng. 2024)
Length:	206 pages
Original in:	Japanese
Availability:	The Night of Baba Yaga - US
	The Night of Baba Yaga - UK
	The Night of Baba Yaga - Canada

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

Japanese title: ババヤガの夜
Translated by Sam Bett

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Our Assessment:

B : rough but quite satisfying

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
The Japan Times	.	27/6/2024	Kris Kosaka

From the Reviews:

"Otani's narrative unfolds around ruthless violence tempered by authentic compassion. (...) (I)t's not the queer coding or the yakuza setting that make this story interesting, it's the novel's refusal to play by any conventions of genre. Joyfully aggressive and painfully tender, The Night of Baba Yaga instead dares to reimagine the boundaries of self within the systems of any society, boldly questioning ideas of violence, love, family and honor. (...) There is nothing clumsy or ill-considered in this spare, unflinching read. The Night of Baba Yaga radiates with both cinematic grandeur and a subtle, constant railing against normalization of any kind" - 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:

In The Night of Baba Yaga twenty-two-year-old Yoriko Shindo attracts the unwanted attention of some underlings of "Genzo Naiki, boss of the Naiki family, a part of the Okitsu-gumi, the largest gang in eastern Japan". Seeing her fighting-prowess first hand -- a woman who can take out several men at a time -- they figure she might be of some use, and Naiki agrees, as she is coërced into becoming the personal bodyguard of Naiki's college-age daughter, Shoko.
Shindo was raised by her grandparents -- and, in particular, hardened by her grandfather, who taught her how to fight. Really fight:

He knew every way there was to win a fight. And he taught her everything. His lessons weren't based on any school. No bowing or formalities. Every move or method was fair game. The objective was to ruin your opponent. This wasn't martial arts. It was violence.

Unsurprisingly, Shindo is a bit rough around the edges -- or rather, throughout. She stands in contrast to the girl she is to keep an eye on and protect, who comes across as all prim and proper, and is still very much under the thumb of her father. But even Shindo sees this only as a phase, and goes along with it for the time-being, accepting that:

Until I'm married, I belong to the Naiki household.

       And she is, in fact, already engaged .....
       Naiki and right-hand man Eishu Yanagi are ruthless and demanding -- which they also demonstrate when some of the underlings drug and try to manhandle Shindo, meting out punishment of appropriate but the most extreme sort. Still, there's a strong father-daughter relationship -- or seems to be -- and: "Naiki may have been a sleazebag, but Shoko had respect for him. Or made it seem that way".
       Aside from running his yakuza-outfit, Naiki also pursues a personal obsession: years earlier, his wife, Yoshiko, had run away with one of his associates, Masa, and he's been hunting them ever since. Sections of the novel also shift focus to the runaway couple and how they have managed to elude Naiki over the years.
       Shindo and Shoko are very different in character and how they've been brought up. but a bond of sorts develops. So limited in her exposure to much of the world -- and knowing that it will be much the same when she is married -- Shoko at least experiences a bit (and then a lot ...) more with Shindo.
       Things come to a head, and the story takes an abrupt turn, with two smaller events that then have great consequences -- Shindo protecting Shoko when a man grabs her, and Yoshiko and Masa becoming involved in a situation that leads to their exposure. Naiki's ability to find satisfaction regarding his ongoing wife-obsession -- manifested also in his treatment of his daughter all along, but eventually really getting out of hand -- seems finally within grasp, with him getting revenge and saving face .....
       One obsession and manhunt is then superseded by another, and the final part of the book telescopes not just over years but decades -- quite a switch, but also quite effective. The male obsessions here -- first Naiki's and then that of Shoko's fiancé, Utagawa (who, from the first, is presented as the most brutal of sadists, reveling in causing pain) -- and this concept of saving some sort of face and getting revenge are a bit extreme, but its part and parcel of the Tarantinoesque exaggeration Otani embraces throughout the novel.
       It is all rather much -- not least some of the violence --, far-fetched, and rough, in too many ways, but for all that Otani still offers enough else to make for a satisfying novel. For better and worse, Otani's quite deft light touch keeps the novel from becoming ponderous -- but that also keeps much of the narrative arguably too simple; with so much also so over the top there's a cartoonish feel to it. There is some genuine poignancy and depth, too, but largely in surface-bits, Otani trying to strike what may be an impossible balance. But if readers can stomach the violence, The Night of Baba Yaga is a solid, quick read.

- M.A.Orthofer, 20 August 2024

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Links:

The Night of Baba Yaga:

Soho Press publicity page
Faber publicity page
Kawade Shobo Shinsha publicity page

Reviews:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Japanese literature

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About the Author:

Japanese author Otani Akira (王谷晶) was born in 1981.

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