First Love - Shimamoto Rio

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First Love

by
Shimamoto Rio

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

Title:	First Love
Author:	Shimamoto Rio
Genre:	Novel
Written:	2018 (Eng. 2024)
Length:	279 pages
Original in:	Japanese
Availability:	First Love - US
	First Love - UK
	First Love - Canada

Japanese title: ファーストラヴ
Translated by Louise Heal Kawai
First Love was made into a movie in 2021, directed by Tsutsumi Yukihiko

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Our Assessment:

B : solidly presented psychological/legal drama, even if it can't quite come to complete grips with all its material

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
Asian Rev. of Books	.	18/11/2024	Mahika Dhar

From the Reviews:

"Though the novel begins as a crime thriller, it’s a genre-bending story that transforms into a romance, murder mystery, and, finally, a courtroom drama. (...) Relentlessly dark and unsettling, First Love is a powerful glimpse into the minds of women who have watched, faced, and recovered from abuse disguised as affection." - Mahika Dhar, Asian Review of Books

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:

First Love is narrated by Yuki Makabe, a clinical psychologist who is commissioned to write a book about a sensational murder, twenty-two-year-old Kanna Hijiriyama having stabbed her father, a well-known painter, killing him. She was quickly arrested, but the motive for the crime is unclear, with it being reported that Kanna cryptically told the police: "You'll have to discover my motive for yourselves". In fact, Kanna says she didn't put it that way, but rather: "I said that I didn't know why I'd done it and could they help me to find out. Something like that" -- and First Love is, in essence, the story of trying to figure out her motive, with Yuki as well as Kanna's court-appointed lawyer, Kasho Anno -- who happens to be Yuki's brother-in-law -- exploring Kanna's past to try to figure out what might lie behind the violent act. (The police themselves don't seem to care much about her motives, having handed her off to the judicial system; they and their investigation (to the apparently very limited extent there was one) don't figure here.)
Kanna is clearly a troubled young woman, and seems honestly eager to understand, for herself, the actions that led to her father's death -- but she doesn't open up easily; still, she takes up Yuki's offer of help, even asking her to:

Please fix me. Help me become someone with a proper sense of guilt.

       As this plea shows, Kanna has some issues, more worried about having a 'proper sense of guilt' than actually understanding that (possible) guilt. As soon also become clear, Kanna has long felt terrible guilt -- about most everything. While she doesn't easily open up about her past experiences, she almost always feels: "I'm the bad one ... It's all my fault" -- a sense her mother, who prefers to testify for the prosecution rather than her defense, seems to have always encouraged.
       Kanna had killed her father after leaving her audition to be a TV presenter -- a job her parents were against her applying for. But differences with her parents extended far beyond that -- while Kanna also was involved with men from a relatively young age, and seems always to have tried very hard to please her partners before ultimately being left by them.
       Familial relationships play a big role in the novel. Kanna's father is not her biological father, though he is the only one she ever knew. Kasho is also not the actual brother of Yuki's husband, Gamon, but rather a cousin who was adopted and raised by Gamon's parents. And Yuki has her own issues with her parents, keeping her mother at arm's length for reasons that are only eventually revealed. Complicating matters, too, is the fact that Yuki and and Kasho knew each other and had a relationship of sorts before Yuki met her future husband.
       Kanna's childhood experiences are the key to her behavior, then and in the present, with a domineering father putting her in positions that warped her understanding and pushed her to situations that further exacerbated things. For one, he had her sit as a model for the (all male) students he taught when she was young -- with Kanna dressed, but posing with nude male models. Her always-ready-(or-at-least-trying-)to-please demeanor then also left her in situations and relationships that continued to undermine any independent sense of self and worth.
       Yuki and Kasho meet several people from Kanna's past, which makes for a better understanding of the person she became. Eventually, she also relates what happened when her father died -- putting a slightly different spin on the tragedy (and leading her to change her guilty plea).
       First Love is of particular interest in its presentation of Japanese societal strictures and expectations. Appearance matters a great deal, and many of the characters don't want to reveal facts because of the bad light it would put others under. Yuki tries to guilt Kanna's mother into testifying on her behalf with a reminder that she'll be seen as a bad mother if she doesn't defend her child ("wouldn't it be a more forward-thinking choice to trust in the mother-daughter bond and for you to lend a hand to Kanna's rehabilitation ?"), while one of Kanna's father's students doesn't want to come too forward as:

It's not only Hijiriyama-sensei's reputation that I'm afraid of damaging through the inevitable misunderstandings of the public but also everyone involved, including his daughter herself.

       Getting the truth out in the open is secondary; appearances and going through the right, decorous, proper motions is much more important. This extends to the legal system itself, where Kasho doesn't want Kanna to change her original guilty plea because that sort of thing is frowned upon, upsetting the delicately balanced system where everyone acts in lockstep proper ways .....
       Before Yuki has even met Kanna, Kasho tells her they resemble each other, telling Yuki that Kanna is similar: "To you, back in the day" and, indeed, Yuki carries a similar burden with her, with a father whose behavior was beyond the pale, and though Yuki was in no way responsible, she admits still has: "my guilt as a daughter, which I could never wipe away".
       First Love is a different kind of legal-psychological drama, the physical evidence and the perpetrator of the actual crime clear enough, but so much else more complex than it first appears -- and that within a judicial system that does not seem eager for or allow much leeway in its process. There is an account of the actual trial then, too, but the courtroom drama remains limited (and the outcome practically foreordained).
       A difficulty with having Yuki be an ostensible professional -- a clinical psychologist, complete with PhD -- is that this suggests some authority regarding the complex psychological issues addressed here, and yet much here feels more like pop psychology; it seems like dangerous territory for an author to tread on. Shimamoto may have even had her own doubts, as she has Kanna's mother questions Yuki's qualifications:

I've heard that being a clinical psychologist isn't a valid qualification. You're not like psychiatrists who have to graduate from medical school. I can't see how random, unqualified person could understand anything about human nature.

Readers may, at times, feel similarly. But if First Love is sometimes dubious in its psychological insight -- into some very disturbing behavior -- it's a solid procedural of uncovering the past and describing the relationships of several of the characters. Shimamoto perhaps layers on a bit much, but she presents it well, making for an engaging read and interesting characters. The underlying issues, especially as related to the idea of 'first love' -- and a warped version of intimacy -- that are found here, which play a role in shaping and burdening both Kanna and Yuki, are disturbing ones which it is difficult to treat adequately, and Shimamoto ranges too far elsewhere to truly explore them fully. much less properly -- but what she does present is certainly also of interest not least in the light it throws on Japanese society and how such issues are handled within it.

- M.A.Orthofer, 9 February 2025

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Links:

First Love:

Honford Star publicity page
文藝春秋 publicity page

Reviews:

First Love - the movie:

IMDb page

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Japanese literature

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About the Author:

Japanese author Shimamoto Rio (島本理生) was born in 1983

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