Book
Review on Cynthia
Gralla. The Floating World. Ballantine (Random House).
New York. 2003. $15.00. Published in the Asian American Press.
Ms.
Gralla's novel on the underworld of the Geisha, maiko (apprentice
geishas), and sushi bars where nude women function as platter
for a special cuisine is much more than the usual romanticism
and exoticism of the tradition of the pleasuring-services of young
Japanese women. What makes this novel significant is that it relates
the demi-mode of the modern hostess to the nature of post-war
Japan–the struggle to find a new personal as well as political
identity.
The
authoress has written a jazz-like riff on the Freudian conception
of travel. For Freud, the word travel, in French "travailler,"
originally referred to a three legged stool on which a prisoner
was tortured. In the inhospitable days of the 19th century, travel
was dangerous and the traveler was often savaged. But more important
for Freud, the traveler broke away, often painfully, from his
or her roots, from the authority of the father and mother, from
the restrictions and rituals of one's native society and culture.
A new person was born. Thus we have the term "en travail"
or "in labor" for a mother giving birth to a new person.
. The route from fetus to infant was covered with blood.
Cynthia
Gralla
pushes
the symbolism even further. Her main character, who at times seems
to be the authoress herself, has only a first name, Liza. She
becomes obsessed with Butoh, a Japanese dance with literally
means "without a trace" and is popularly called "the
dance of utter darkness." Liza defines it in a way that presciently
suggests a return to the womb, a reduction of the flesh, a flight
back into the blood of pre-existence, a return to the weightlessness
of floating in amneotic fluids: "The practitioners of this
dance, their faces and bodies painted dead-white, were known to
shave their heads, shed their clothes, . . . speak in tongues
(while distending their own), flail their limbs, contort their
faces, spit roses, dance on glass, hang from buildings, spend
hours without moving, rehearse by night, go mad by day."
Throughout the book we hear of a return to the womb, an attempt
to reduce the body to nothingness. Just before the end of the
novel, Liza begins to succumb the wasting away of her body–now
flecked with blood, and beyond any physical sensation.
Ms.
Gralle is well aware of the psychological significance of naming
a person. In Japan, there is a major ceremony to give someone
a name. It creates or re-creates your identity. Liza's name changes
according to which lover she entertains, what dance she is in,
what hostess club she serves. Her choice of a name at the conclusion
of the book provides a final rapture to the book which left me
shaking. Reader beware–do not read the last pages before
reading the whole book.
What
makes this novel exhilarating and impossible to put down is the
use of language. The descriptions of people and the metaphors
for feelings are intense and memorable. Here is Liza's first description
of her classmate in Japan: "Yuriko was a long exhaust of
exterior joy and a slow faint of interior sorrow." Like the
sensation she is trying to achieve, Liza writes in layered metaphors
which fly up from the page like butterflys escaping from their
cocoons. The language is not just descriptive–it is a prop
to allow the reader to achieve an altered state of consciousness.
There is a Zen like state of irrational acceptance of and identity
with the illusion of existence.
The
novel is a complex choreography of short and inter-connected scenes
ranging from Liza's several loveless affairs, battles with anorexia,
raptures with dance of the Butoh, involvements with iconoclastic
and sometimes violent artists, and interactions with political
radicals. Nearing the end of the novel, the reader begins to hyperventilate
from all the rush of activity and the suspense of watching a life
that appears to be diving into self-destruction. After reading
this "autobiographical travelogue," I wondered how the
author could return to her real life as a student in Comparative
Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Life at
a library desk seems to be totally anti-climcatic.
The
book provides one of the few glimpses of the relations between
modern Japanese culture and the political-social system in Tokyo.
(Osaka is too gangster oriented, and rural Japan is still very
traditional.). Ms. Gralla, who at times becomes a little lecturish,
makes a link between the radical students and the sex trade. She
is writing not only of her own Freudian metamorphosis, but of
Japan's as well. Perhaps, unconsciously, she is joining ranks
with John Dower, the academic expert on post-war Japanese culture,
who wrote that the "carnal literature . . . the sodden romanticizers
of love and revolution. . . called doctrinaire modes of thinking
into question in ways [Japanese] intellectual critics rarely succeeded
in doing." Dower's conclusion can be applied to Liza and
her Tokyo life. She and her characters in The Floating World
"might not [constitute] the basis for a genuinely revolutionary
transformation of Japan, but their challenge to old verities [will
prove] unforgettable."
This
novel provides a much better look into Japan's future culture
and values than all the books on the traditional geishas, flower
arrangements, political parties, and economic worries. Read and
enjoy the trip.
