夢の島 (講談社文芸文庫)

by Keizō Hino

巨大な都市のゴミの捨て場所――夢の島。バイクを疾駆させ、主人公を惹きつける若い女。ゴミの集積地が、“魅惑の場所”に鮮やかに逆転する――時代の最尖端での光芒を放つ、日野文学の最高傑作。芸術選奨受賞作。

Genres: Japan, Fiction, Japanese Literature, Asia, Asian Literature, Novels, Literature

158 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Keizo Hino (日野 啓三 Hino Keizō?, June 14, 1929 – October 14, 2002) was a Japanese author.

He won the 1974 Akutagawa Prize for Ano yūhi (The Evening Sun) and the 1986 Tanizaki Prize for Sakyu ga ugoku yo ni (砂丘が動くように?). Born in Tokyo, he accompanied his parents to Korea, when the country was still under Japanese colonial rule. After the war, he returned to Japan, graduating from the University of Tokyo and joining the staff of the Yomiuri Shimbun, a leading Japanese newspaper, in 1952. He served as a foreign correspondent in South Korea and Vietnam before becoming a novelist. Though he is often described as an environmentalist author, the focus of much of his fiction is the urban physical environment. Hino's works are striking for being simultaneously autobiographical and surrealistic. His novel Yume no Shima has been translated into English by Charles De Wolf as Isle of Dreams, and into German by Jaqueline Berndt and Hiroshi Yamane as Trauminsel; a short story, Bokushikan, has been translated into English by Charles De Wolf as The Rectory; another short story, Hashigo no tatsu machi 梯の立つ街, has been translated by Lawrence Rogers as "Jacob's Tokyo Ladder."

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Mariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Garbage! Oh, wait, is that misleading? This book is about garbage. I didn't mean to imply any other meaning that might attach itself to the word garbage. My apologies, Oscar. Well, when in Rome... This review is going to be garbage. Refuse this refuse!

Oscar's can reverberates all kinds of echoes about the land, people and their relation to their garbage. Trash talk. It's tin. Or is it aluminum. My garbage can is made of germ breeding plastic. They have babies of garbage germs.

I remember what a scandal it was when I was in high school (it was probably even before that) and the city organizers demanded a fee for their garbage. You could purchase high tech yellow bags for your excess excess. Later they charged for the size of cans. So home is plastic. Home is where the heart is, they say, and so this heart is steel and glass like one of those high rises that Shozo is so taken with. Home is the bag of bones and flesh. The styrofoam will take so long to decompose it practically never will. This shit could be forever. The can is an island and they say that no man is an island. Don't ask me who they is 'cause I don't know. The arms are made of typo ridden papers discarded for their blunders. Posing like one of those mannequins in the store windows. Self conscious walking. Does anyone else ever notice how they walk and then can't not notice every step? And it only stops when there's no one else around to be self conscious around? It was this feeling about Isle of Dreams that I liked the most. I knew what he was talking about when Shozo starts walking like one of those mannequins. The being garbage aspect of this whole life thing. I know, I was gonna do one of my things about man being garbage. I lost the thread. So Isle of Dreams is about where man begins and all of the garbage ends. Or is it the other way around.

I described this book as "Murakami without all of the semen" to my sister. That's a review too. Fine, twist my arms (but be gentle 'cause they are made of junk). (It was good enough for Lauren!) There's a chick and obsessively lost (and lost obsessively) Shozo is along for the ride (it's a motorcycle. Tough Japanese chicks in novels always ride motorcycles. They are also always mysterious! Someone should tell her that. Maybe it was more dangerous in the 1980s when this was written). What I liked about this book is that he really is just along for the ride. She doesn't change him with her eyes shut don't let go 'cause I'm stopping for no one speed. I would have hated this book if that happened. The mysterious girl is part of the scenery. If I made some simile about forces of nature right about now I would hate myself in the morning (don't look at the clock, Mariel). The surroundings are to notice and measure against, not change overnight or some thing. I guess it was supposed to be a big deal about her but I really did care more about the garbage and the mannequins. They are more of the every day life than some dream that some chick is gonna show up and you know what the hell she's talking about (that never happens!).

"Yet have we done nothing more than throw cold and hard materials together and pile them up? Enclosed wall-to-wall interiors such as this, empty and frigid, quite like an abandoned mine... It is we who have first bestowed on our country this hermetically sealed darkness, desolate and dead, where even the strange-smelling air is stagnant."

I did want to feel that more. The contained in the man made and in the making itself (that'd be nature). I mean, I feel that all the time. I wanted to feel the obsession for it in someone else. The becoming nature of the unreal. Yet it is real 'cause its got four corners. The unrealness of being inside for too long is something I get. I can forget what it is like to even be outside after a long day under those unreal lights (this is best depicted in the film Joe Versus the Volcano).

And that's all it really was. A vague feeling. Seeing an expression cross a face and wondering what it was all about. How long does it last to commune with nature? Does it get too quiet out there to really say anyting?


Hey, I still dog-eared a few pages of excerpts I wanted to save. Hey, don't go giving me that sob story about dogearing books. This book wanted me to dog-ear it. It's not wasteful because I could come back to it some day. It would be a shame to waste perfectly good nature scenes.

P.s. Do you remember that scene on The Simpsons when they move Springfield a long after they've filled it all up with garbage (again)? (That's why there are so many Springfields in the usa. Of course!) Then it cuts to a native American crying a single manly tear. I know this was a spoof of something else because someone was snotty to me about that once. I don't remember what it was. Why do people have to be mysterious about these things? My memory is a wasteland for all.

Ps.s. I wasn't lying. This review is garbage. Trash talking the scenery.

[abcdefg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an incredible book. The psychological foreshadowing and the tension between urbanity and nature is played out in such a surreal, spooky, and thrilling way. The striking images of the mannequins in the store display windows and how that conjured up themes of decay and the corruption of human beings through modernity and urban life really spoke to me on a deeper level. At one point I started to wonder if indeed Shozo was a mannequin. The uncanny relationship Shozo strikes up with Yoko just swept me up into this story. I love the dream-like quality and darkness of the characters. There's a definite psychological aspect to the novel. The inner states blend with the outer world, and you're left kind of stunned by the fate of the individuals. I thought it was an absolutely innovative and wonderfully written piece of literature. This book is a piece of art.

[Aaron McQuiston · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Isle of Dreams" is a nice, short novel about a man who unknowingly has been looking for something bigger than his life, living in Tokyo, being surrounded by skyscrapers in crowded streets. He finds this in reclaimed land, land built with layers of waste from the city and dirt. These areas are desolate, empty of buildings and life and crowds. He finds that this waste from the city is more life-giving than the city itself.

It takes a while for the novel to start working it's magic. The first third is kind of boring, deliberate and slow, but it really sets up the rest of the novel nicely. There is some nice imagery and metaphors that are well demonstrated and written. "Isle of Dreams" is definately worth the effort and is a nice novel to read on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

[cardulelia carduelis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Banal it is indeed, yet very much a manifestation of this transient reality.

So starts the Isle of Dreams, a meandering dull day through the eyes of an administrator in a high-rise construction firm, nearing retirement in upscale Tokyo. The first chapter is only 9 pages long but it took me a couple of sittings to read, so familiar was the grind of the worker, so grey was his outlook. It's only in chapter 2 when you begin to get a real glimpse of what this book is about and its ethereal qualities start to peek through.
Hino's novel shows the long unwinding of a good Japanese citizen, who married for duty, who worked his day job with no particular passion, whose existence became routine. It starts with noticing the light in the windows in the far reaches of the skyscrapers, an anime convention of the city's youths, and a refuse site out in the reclaimed land of Tokyo bay.
I really loved the atmosphere in this book. In times of stress and trial I often find myself wandering the wilderness and could identify the mixture of tension, fear, and dreams in Shozo's amble. He finds places of quiet but intense focus and magical settings devoid of people. The ethereal qualities of the book build to a climax in the final 30 pages that I wasn't expecting.
It's a book of creepy, ghostly nature. If you like the more contemplative moments in Jeff Vandermeer's work you'll probably get a lot out of this. Slow-going, gently decaying, one to read gradually and savour.


My own personal escapist wasteland, south of the Bay

[Alex2739 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I definitely need to reread this book!

[Tenma · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Isle of Dreams" is about introspection. The first third of this novel is an utter bore; a middle aged man's fascination with a municipal dump site on a reclaimed land. It only gains some momentum after he meets a mysterious woman. It then gets a bit weird, but remains slow.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cryptic, quiet, detached. So, basically everything I expected. Not a gripping read, but a thoughtful one.

[Melos Han-Tani · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun novel from the '80s. The imagery of Tokyo, growing mycelium-like, from the ashes of the war, were interesting - as was a protagonist who worked in the construction industry for much of his life. Early on in the book there's some reflections about how the youth are so into popular culture, cosplay, fantasy - but it doesn't come off as old geezer-y, but with a sense of guilt: did the postwar generation construct a Japan - especially a Tokyo - that had become so hostile so as to demand a high level of fantasy and escape. It's interesting to think about in 2023, when I feel that anime, games, manga, light novels, are only continuing to become more and more inward-looking and self-referential...

As far as the other characters go, they're a bit more so-so... there's an 'odd younger woman' character who kinda takes the man on his metaphysical quest, and a younger boy. I think their dynamic works best when the other two act like 'alternate selves' of the protagonist, rather than actual characters themselves. But a weird ending reveals the younger woman to have some kind of split personality thing (lol) which I feel like must have been force by a publisher to add in.

The process of going from Tokyo, to Yumenoshima (a real place), to a tiny weird garbage island/outpost and its organic imagery is interesting, reminiscent of the similar strange journeys in some of Kobo Abe's novels (Secret Rendezvous, Kangaroo Notebook).

It's a short novel, I'd recommend it if you like Tokyo at all or big cities in general. Sure some of the ideas and imagery aren't as groundbreaking since there's been 40 years of similar ideas, but it's cool to see some early thoughts about urban Tokyo. (For reference, this came out a few years after Nausicaa started its serialization, and a year or two before Murakami's Hardboiled Wonderland which kinda has that 'man on a metaphysical urban journey' vibe to it)

[Alec Cartwright · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book originally published in the native tongue, 1985, is an exceptional gem.

Having found it at modestly priced bookcorner store, I saw Dalkey Archive was the publisher, which attracted me to closer inspection, and ultimately purchase.

I do not wish to sound pretentious or as an insufferable know-it-all (or worse, the genetic mutation of “read-it-all”). But merely to offer perspective, I’ve read Mishima’s Tetrology, Damazai, Murakami, Abe, Oe, among other Japanese writers.

This lucid yet uncanny treasure reminds me almost something of Musil in a way I cannot express, far more compact clearly.

[the following quotes taken from the book in no way is a spoiler or would give anything away of the plot, but rather the sort to be repurposed as Epigraphs?]

“Every item of rubbish, broken and tossed aside, exuded an an intense sense of being, a pungent odor of life. On the shelf of a shop or a department store, they would have appeared quite ordinary, drawing not the least emotion. Yet Now they gleamed like precious ore just unearthed, each asserting itself, each telling its own story” - Pg.47

Or take the first two sentences of the book:

“When our consciousness begins to change, for better or worse, events around us seem to fall into line, starting with mere coincidences, hardly worth noting. Of course, how could it be otherwise?” - Pg. 1

Shozo’s journey into the stygian refuge of Tokyo, is a profound meditation, one like tubular bulbs spreading over vast interrelated seemingly disparate connections through time in the space of the city.

Highly recommend this one, a sleeping giant of literary wonder. Cerebral, warm, human.

[Joshua Line · Rating 5 out of 5]

Original review from July 2011:
http://paperandcard.blogspot.com.au/2...

"For all of you not wasting away in concreteland, the Isle of Dreams is here!"

I was instantly enticed to read Keizo Hino's Isle of Dreams by the blurb on the back cover:

Though it has a lovely name, the real "Isle of Dreams" is a hunk of reclaimed land in Tokyo bay where the city dumps its garbage... and yet, Shozo Sakai, a middle-aged widower, does indeed find the place beautiful: gravitating more and more, since the death of his wife, toward the isle's massive piles of trash'.

How wonderful! I'd spent a lot of time in Odaiba, that reclaimed land site now filled with shopping malls (whose ceiling is decorated with clouds and features lighting which changes from day to night in an hour), TV studios, beaches and scale-models of the Statue of Liberty, reached by automated elevated monorail, and thought the place strange, but went nowhere near actual rubbish, only this simulated cultural kind.

There's comparisons to be made between this little-known novel by little-known author with the work of Osamu Dazai and similarly pessimistic Japanese writers, particularly as articulated through a close understanding of physical artifacts and modern urban detritus. This is especially present in Hino, in an almost metaphysical sense: that the inanimate matter of contemporary society has eclipsed human life, and that human society is doomed to be overrun by its own waste.

With its blurring of the boundaries between dreams and waking life, inanimate objects and living beings, past and future, Isle of Dreams is also a lot like the later films of David Lynch, but given that Hino wrote it in 1985 its incredible how contemporary it reads. The manner in which the lead character, the widower Shozo Sakai, wanders haphazardly into strange, otherworldly scenarios also recalls the dream(y) sequences of Kazuo Ishiguro, specifically the battle scene of When We Were Orphans and the whole of The Unconsoled. Hino however is the less straightforward writer, creating more enigmatic scenes, and allowing his story to conclude without clear resolution. These are all commendable traits, and are brilliantly executed, and Isle of Dreams is among the most haunting and genuinely thrilling (in the sense of being energised by Hino's fictitious creations) novels I have read.

The narrative follows the gradual unravelling of Sakai, an office worker for a construction firm, from his harmless, lonely wanderings looking at modern buildings, through his growing obsession with the reclaimed land of Tokyo, to his nightmarish nocturnal excursions with a female motorcyclist and her son through bombed out relics of Tokyo bay islands. Mannequins appear to come to life, and window displays posses more reality than the 'real' scenes around them.

Hino's pessimistic philosophy is expressed through the thoughts of Sakai when charged by these new encounters, 'charged' in much the same way as the protagonist in Tom McCarthy's Remainder when experiencing reenactments, and presented in the book in italics. The most pointed of these occur when Sakai first visits the waste disposal site at Reclaimed Land Site #13:

Tokyo was expanding (vertically, having already reached its horizontal limits), brimming over with commodities (devoid of either the light or shadow of history), the ever-increasing refuse (with many items unnecessarily discarded) brought to life again between the water and the light (with glittering plastic bags and the wheezing cacophony of garbage)...

Tokyo Lives, thought Shozo. No, he pondered further, as he recalled the view he had just seen of the distant, smog-enshrouded city from atop the mound of refuse, "Tokyo" is only what we call a quivering, breathing, expanding presence, a shape maintained by the endless belching forth of waste, exhaust, sewer water, heat, radio waves, noise, and idle chatter; a circulatory mechanism, invisible but powerful, created and controlled by no one... And when I too have been twisted to the breaking point and cast upon the rubbish heap, will I too acquire light and shadow and begin to tell my story?

And later, upon entering a mannequin manufacturing warehouse:

The thickness of the hard concrete, the intersecting iron reinforcement bars, a steel frame holding up the broad, high roof... Shozo had walked around construction sites more times than he could count, but this was the first time he had felt so directly over the entire surface of his body the presence of cement and metal - their roughness and weight, their crushing oppression, the cracking sounds, the piercing smells, the colours of ash and rust, the bone-chilling cold... It is we who have bestowed on our country this hermetically sealed darkness, desolate and dead, where even the strange smelling air is stagnant.

Isle of Dreams is full of these quotable observations, all of which seem to perfectly embody contemporary hauntological musings and psychogeographic thoughts on non-spaces. Hino's supposed to be similar to Ballard, in which case I'd better read more Ballard. It's intoxicating, this uniquely Japanese cynicism and melancholia, and Hino adds to this by attempting to explore beneath this bleak surface, capturing the rotten, soul-destroying essence of contemporary society, and its in-built future destruction. I've been prattling on about this book to anyone who will listen, it's marvellous, and I hope Dalkey Archive, or anyone, translate his other works.

[Paul Grech · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dreamy and contemplative, this tale of a man finally awakening to passion after a life living according to society's expectations is beautiful in a way that is difficult to describe. The criticism of modern work culture and the greed fueling the construction industry are interwoven into the story masterfully.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Admittedly weird, but the language, dreamy atmosphere and peek into 1980s Japan made this work for me.

[miremnao · Rating 3 out of 5]

Неплохо, ни местами скучновато. Японщина, одним словом.

[Felix Zilich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Сёдзо Сакаи работает в строительной компании. Немного за 50, вдовец, детей нет. из хобби - только привычка ходить по Токио и залипать на интересную архитектуру. Старик Сакаи из послевоенного поколения, он помнит деревянные халупы и мертвые пепелища, поэтому созерцание красивых новостроек - большая услада для его глаз. В один прекрасный день, попытавшись проследить за странными подростками, герой попадает к причалу Харуми на настоящий анимешный конвент и это навсегда переворачивает его жизнь. Теперь Сакаи видит, что город изменился и стал чужим даже для тех, кто еще не стал взрослым.

Пытаясь бежать от этого города, токийцы создают новые острова из бытового и строительного мусора прямо посреди Токийского залива. Сакаи начинает приезжать к этим островам, в тринадцатую зону, каждое воскресенье, еще не понимая зачем он это делает. Проводником в этот дивный новый мир становится для стареющего архитектора загадочная молодая мотоциклистка, которая превращается каждое утро в безумную художницу из Сибауры по имени Ёко Хаяси.

Мне нравятся мужчины, скажет женщина-манекен, которые, прожив жизнь, вдруг понимают, что сбились с пути.

Однажды ночью они отправятся на Одайбу. Пустынный клочок суши, где вокруг заброшенного форта растут настоящие джунгли и каждый день умирают птицы. Скоро Токио станет нежилым местом, пробормочет их спутник, маленький брат женщины-манекена, после чего замолкнет и помашет рукой стае летучих мышей.

От книги видного урбаниста эпохи "мыльного пузыря" Кэйдзо Хино ожидаешь жирной экзистенциальной мессаги в духе его соотечественника Кобо Абэ. Писатель говорит об этом с первой страницы, возвращаясь к вопросам смысла раз за разом, но только не спешит переходить к выводам. В финале, правда, окажется, что Хино вовсе не Абэ, а скорее Баллард. И небоскребы с кислотными потёками на стенах вовсе не декорации для человеческого безумия, а совсем наоборот.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, that was... interesting. It's not exceptional, but it's an easy read. (Yes, despite what I said in a previous update. Shh~ I was exhausted when I posted that...)

Okay, so I kinda lack memories of the first half of the book because I kept falling asleep on it, but it wasn't bad enough for me to stop yet. Plus, the book is quite short (less than 200 pages) so yeah, I've reached the end.

Not gonna lie, there's not much of a plot. Okay, there's kind of one, which is only revealed in the last chapter, but can easily be guessed for people used to reading thrillers. And to be honest, I've read more fascinating books about characters with multiple personalities.

What I find to be the strong point of this book is... please sit down because this is an unexpected one: the descriptions. I'm usually not someone who lives for descriptions, quite the opposite actually, I'm more about action and plot twists... but this is what catches the attention. The descriptions have quite a number of details that help you picture the scene, yet are kept short enough so as not to bore you to death. Also, it had kind of a poetic side sometimes. Maybe that came from the translation from Japanese, which I believe to be a language with more images than French, so it can only become that when translated though?

The one other thing I found... peculiar was storytelling-wise. It's only retrospectively that you realize it, but it was an odd choice that the story be told from Sakai's POV when the story was in fact more about that women Yoko. Then again, I think the story's more intriguing -if you can say so- from that POV.

I would probably not recommend it, but if you want some light reading (both in terms of story and length), please go ahead and read it. :)

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eerie and almost surreal novel, Isle of Dreams forces the reader and the protagonist, Shozo Sakai, to come to terms with humanity's own creations. Are the skyscrapers and condominiums of our cities merely a means to our end? Or are they, as Shozo gradually discovers, part of their own deeply-connected and detached from the humans who created them?

Hino Keizō has a distinct and alluring authorial tone, his words evocatively painting scenes of the city itself coming alive; in one chapter his description of mannequins in a shop display window made them seem almost too human. The eerie descent onto the Isle of Dreams is written in such a way that all the reader's senses are heightened by the seemingly-alien landscape so close by. As Shozo returns from the island, he returns to a city even more removed from when he set out - the smallest details are captured by Hino Keizō and in the translation by Charles de Wolf.

Isle of Dreams is only a short novel but it is a powerful and imaginative one - the almost magical quality of mundane existence is reminiscent of Murakami Haruki's novels - and the evocative imagery enables the living, breathing city of Tokyo to become one of the characters.

The Dalkey Archive has done a great job in making this novel more widely available.

[Cliff Hare · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, the city of Tokyo comes almost literally alive. The refuse created by the symbiotic humans that live within its confines is used to expand its borders further and further out to sea . .so more buildings can be built to house more people who will create more garbage so the city can continue to grow.
Shozo Sakai, an aging widower, at first doesn't comprehend the reality that surrounds him but a visit out to Tokyo's Isle of Dreams begins the transformation of his consciousness with the mysterious girl Yoko as his guide.
In "Isle of Dreams", Keizo Hino shows how humanity largely lives in an environment entirely of its own creation and how this creation has in many ways superseded us and taken on a life of its own. The city is our ideas made real, an artificial ecosystem that pushes against the natural world, altering or destroying it.
This is an eerie, unsettling book that puts humanity into the larger context of its own creations - I highly recommend it.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one, but I think it has some subtleties that don't come through in the translation. I can get the stuff about the relationship between the unnatural and the manmade, the cyclic building and rotting, the different aspects of selves, but there still felt like there was more I wasn't completely understanding. It's definitely a highly nuanced work, dream/nightmare like at times, and I think I missed some of the important stuff.

[Ray Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bound to remind people of Murakami, this one. It is set at an interesting time in Tokyo, and builds a mythology around the reclaimed land now occupied as the district of Odaiba. Something very explicitly architectural about the novel, which is probably one of the reasons I liked it... A quick read, but worthwhile even if it is a bit of a sketch rather than a finished work. Keen to find more by the author - the Dalkey Archive books are good for presenting some rather interesting translations.

[Sae-chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A satire? I think this is realism. It gave too much explanation on the allegories. A good read, though, although not a very pleasant one. Not very rosy-smelling.

[Kulo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ei huono, mutta pitkäveteinen. Saman asian olisi varmaankin voinut sanoa paremmin novellilla, sillä loppujen lopuksi varsinainen sisältö jäi vähän laihanpuoleiseksi