Chasing After the Romanticized Japan in 'The Pine Islands'

Reading this book is like slipping in and out of a dream. One that connects to itself each night and you’re left to interpret the meaning between the blurry absences. It’s the type of book that positions the reader squarely in the narrative and requests that you take your turn to fill in the blanks. The absences aren’t a weakness, but an invitation.

The central story in Marion Poschmann’s The Pine Islands (translated by Jen Calleja) is about Gilbert, a German scholar of beard fashion in film, who takes an impulsive trip to Japan after dreaming that his wife has cheated on him. He develops a plan to follow the path of Bashō, the 17th-century haiku master, and journey to the pine islands of Matsushima. Along the way he befriends a young man named Yosa who wishes to commit suicide and tells Gilbert that he is looking for the right place.

In the first portion of the book, Yosa seems too absent as a character. You see him only as a rough shadow and are eager to know more. Meanwhile, Gilbert grows dislikable in his tourist banter and neglect towards his wife, Mathilda, who obviously has some questions about his disappearance.

As the story progresses, however, you do learn more about Yosa and the vagueness of his image comes to mean something. There’s this lovely scene halfway through the book where Gilbert and Yosa attend a kabuki theatre performance featuring a famous onnagata, an older male performer who is a “master in the portrayal of young women.” Gilbert is not initially excited about this event and internally voices his disinterest. But he stays. He stays when he sees that Yosa, who seems to not care for anything in life anymore, is excited about the show. Yosa even grips his hand as the show starts because he is so moved by what he is experiencing. We see Yosa as Gilbert would see him; the angles of his character and the depth of his pain are only glanced through small windows, but they’re there and the glimpses are powerful.

Gilbert, also, grows on you over time. His faults are clearly on display, but his softness is also revealed through his roughly penned haikus, his interactions with Yosa, and the changes in his thoughts as his loneliness grows: “thin black seaweed swayed in the water, snaking around the low shoreline, and he thought of Mathilda’s hair, the way it unfurled when she lay in the bath, slender eelgrass, its buoyant toing and froing.”

If it was just the first half of the novel that was being reviewed, it would be graded much lower. As it is, the author brilliantly reveals the intent in her writing as the story progresses. Rather than tying up the loose ends, she leaves them beautifully fluttering in the wind, and you do not feel lost in that experience. The writing is poetic and it’s worth savouring.

Thank you to Coach House Books for providing Shrapnel with an advance reading copy.

The Pine Islands is available for purchase at Coach House Books’ website and in bookstores across Canada in April, 2020.