From one of Japan's rising literary stars, two mesmerizing novellas
told with stylistic inventiveness and breathtaking sensitivity about
memory, loss, and love.
Touring the Land of the Dead tells the story of Taichi, who was forced
to stop working almost a decade ago and since then he and his wife
Natsuko have been getting by on her part-time wages. But Natsuko is a
woman accustomed to hardship. When her own family's fortune dried up for
years during her childhood, she, her brother, and her mother lived a
surreal hand-to-mouth existence shaped by her mother's refusal to accept
their new station in life.
One day, Natsuko sees an ad for a spa and recognizes the place as the
former luxury hotel that Natsuko's grandfather had taken her mother to
when she was little. She decides to take her damaged husband to the spa,
despite the cost, but their time there triggers hard but ultimately
redemptive memories relating to the complicated history of her family
and a reconciliation with her husband.
Modeled on The Makioka Sisters, Junichiro Tanizaki's classic story,
Ninety-Nine Kisses portrays in touching and lyrical fashion the lives
of the four unmarried sisters in a historical, close-knit neighborhood
of contemporary Tokyo. An atmospheric and captivating tail of siblings
and women's lives.
