Sunrise

Starred review from May 15, 2023
Kobayashi (Trinity, Trinity, Trinity) grapples with nuclear power’s long shadow over Japanese society in her fascinating collection. Throughout, Kobayashi contrasts nuclear power’s destructive and constructive capabilities. In the title story, she traces the life of Yō
ko, who’s born after the bombing of Nagaski and dies shortly before the explosion at Fukushima. In “Precious Stones,” a standout among many strong entries, chemotherapy saves an ailing mother’s life. The same story also details how advancements in nuclear technology led to mass production of synthetic jewels. Woven together, the twin story lines illustrate how nuclear power has become inextricable from daily life. In starkly lyrical prose, “She Waited” follows the Olympic torch’s journey through Nazi Germany and illuminates the connections between sports and fascism. Other stories enter more enigmatic and speculative territory. “See” imagines a drug that causes temporary blindness, which users take to experience a kind of sensory deprivation. For “The Flying Tobita Sisters,” Kobayashi envisions a human world where everyone has wings, and the concept of bipedal life is revolutionary. With recursive events and characters, the author makes the most of her core themes. It’s a knockout.

June 1, 2023
A collection of stories about nuclear power and its effects. Japanese author Kobayashi's second book to appear in English explores ground previously traversed in the novel Trinity, Trinity, Trinity (2022). This is not a complaint: Kobayashi, who is also known as a visual artist, doesn't cannibalize her own work. Her interest in atomic energy and its insidiously long-reaching effects on Japanese society tends to be deep and wide-ranging rather than repetitive. Kobayashi's stories emphasize the experiences of women and frequently veer into the speculative realm. In "Hello My Baby, Hello My Honey," a woman goes into labor in the summer of 1945. But is she giving birth to a baby or to a bomb of her own? As often as Kobayashi roots her work in historical and scientific research ("The sun is 1,400,000 kilometers in diameter," she informs us in "Sunrise"), she also does so in rich and evocative metaphors. In "Shedding," which Kobayashi apparently wrote at the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown in Japan, a mysterious illness is spreading: The infected lose the ability to speak or to process language at all and are eventually encouraged to kill themselves. Even those who avoid suicide "lost their words completely," Kobayashi writes. "These poor souls were called empty shells. An empty shell--as a person loses words one by one, soon their most distinguishing feature becomes their lack. Their lack of words. Tantamount to a lack of life, of existence." But as this passage also makes clear, Kobayashi has the unfortunate habit, every once in a while, of hitting her mark a little too squarely on the nose. It's OK, you want to assure her; we get it; no need to spell it all out. A remarkable collection marred only by occasional heavy-handedness.

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