Friday, August 31, 2018

えぇー!


Wired after watching The Commitments one evening, we flipped through the Netflix suggestions and happened across this Japanese television show. Like most Japanese television, it’s somewhat bizarre.  Most likely, you’ll turn to your viewing partner a couple of times and say “whaaaa?!” Admittedly, it’s also strangely addictive.

Kanae Minato’s Confessions another product of Japan, has the same mesmerizing but perplexing quality. Even as you read about the book’s central tragedy from varying viewpoints, you might also find yourself thinking one or more of these expressions.

Confessions opens on the last day of school. After giving a brief lecture on being a “model middle school for the Health Ministry’s campaign to promote dairy products,” a teacher who is retiring slips into a long, painfully personal, soliloquy. She ends by explaining what revenge she’s exacted on the two students she blames for the accident involving her young daughter Manami.  One by one, these students, as well as their family members and classmates, recount the tragedy from his or her perspective as well as lay bare the horrifying consequences of her accusations.

Who knew reading a “book of genre fiction intranslation” could simultaneously evoke multiple senses of the word sensational?

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