I feel a sort of kinship to Japan. Part of me is wholly Puerto Rican, of course. Salsa, merengue, loud laughter, lighting Baby Jesus candles for a prosperous New Year. Walter Mercado, Olga Tañon, Daddy Yankee were all fixtures of my young years. Dayanara Torres becoming Miss Universe. Ricky Martin charting in the US. Arroz con gandules, pasteles, perníl, tostones. Achiote infusing oil with its earthy scent and violently red hue. Verdant green mountains. The accent of my people. Coquís at night with their constant song. Co-queeeeeee, co-queeeeeeee, co-queeeeeeeee. En resumidas cuentas, soy Boricua de pura cepa!
But another part of me is enamored with the sound of cicadas in the summer, Ghibli films, barley tea, City Pop, neko, pour-over coffee, sakura, kawaii, Nintendo. The subtle sweetness of Pocky, the sharp saltiness of shoyu, the chirp of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star from my rice cooker. Things that come from an island that is on the opposite side of the world from the island I grew up in. Maybe above all, I adore the gentle and bittersweet slice-of-life literature...
In some ways, Japanese literature reminds me of Gabriel García Marquez. Perhaps it's the magic woven from the mundane. Or the sweet richness in the spare prose. Some have told me they have tried reading Japanese novels and find it boring. But to my soul, full of sharp edges and often on the verge of exhaustion, it's a relief to read a Haruki Murakami, a Banana Yoshimoto, or even a detective novel from Japan. A balm for my soul. I love Before the Coffee Gets Cold, The Traveling Cat Chronicles, What You a Looking is in the Library, Convenience Store Woman, The Professor and the Housekeeper, Kitchen. So many others. I sometimes read a few in a row. Stop myself from reading another. I never want to take those novels for granted. I'm quite lucky because, for the past decade, there has been a veritable influx of works translated to English. I remember reading 1Q84 in 2014 and being in awe at how different it was from anything I had read. Much closer to the style I knew from Latin authors but... less dramatic. I remember starting to collect books. A tiny shelf. Now I have enough to make one large bookshelf were I to put them together! Companies like Pushkin Vertigo have been translating crime novels from different eras and countries to Western audiences. It's wonderful to read a detective novel from the Golden Era of Mystery but from another culture.
I swear... I hear the cicadas singing as I read these novels and somehow all the wrong things become softer and more tolerable.
Wasn’t light enough? The warmth of daily life didn’t sustain you? Was the allure of what was dark, dirty, cloudy, and shadowed really so strong, once you’d had a taste—once your heart was stained with it, that it was worth your life?
– Banana Yoshimoto (Moshi Moshi)
We get used to things too easily. You think something's tasty the first time you eat it, but then you start taking it for granted. Never forget your first impressions.
– Hisashi Kashiwai (The Kamogawa Food Detectives)