The Part of Me That Isn't Broken Inside

by Kazufumi Shiraishi, Raj Mahtani (Translation)

Naoto Matsubara works in a Tokyo publishing house, though the work doesn't particularly interest him. What does interest him, we soon discover, is the purpose of life. Naoto ponders the powers of love, attachment, and mutual care by examining closely his own friends and lovers, searching out how exactly his connection to them confers meaning on his life. Along the way, Naoto also draws on the thought of many writers and philosophers, including Tolstoy, Fromm, and Mishima.

Genres: Japan, Japanese Literature, Fiction

225 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Kazufumi SHIRAISHI (白石 一文) is a Japanese writer. He is the son of novelist Ichiro Shiraishi. The two are the only father-son pair to have both received the Naoki Prize, the father on his eighth try after numerous disappointments and the son on his second, for the 2009 Hokanaranu hito e (To an Incomparable Other); at his prize press conference the son got a laugh by joking that he had always "hated" the Naoki because of the grief it had put his father through. The younger Shiraishi's first job out of college was as an editor and magazine reporter at Bungeishunju. He published his first work, Isshun no hikari (A Ray of Light), in 2000, and three years later quit his company to become a full-time writer. In 2009 he received the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize for Kono mune ni fukabuka to tsukisasaru ya o nuke (Remove That Arrow from Deep in My Heart); other novels include Suna no ue no anata (You upon the Sands; 2010). Shiraishi's stance toward love and life powerfully informs many of his works, lending them a philosophical ring.

Source：http://www.booksfromjapan.jp/authors/...

Reviews

[Christina Pan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Drama queen

I like this book with reservations. This is like a rant book but if I ranted eloquently. Awful sex scenes (wdym the tongue is flickering like a fire (?) but there were good things about being born and free will. This author clearly has a huge love and respect for philosophers writers and art in general and I actually loved all the references to prior figures from Fromm to Inoue despite how heavy handed these references they are.

Passages I liked

“ as that lady Buddhist wrote," if you thoroughly scrape we from human existence, using a bamboo whisk perhaps, all bugs that pass and fade away, including youth, beauty, love, saution, material wealth, social status, and worldly abilities, the steeral frame that remains in the end will be merely made f-for everyone alike old age, illness, and death." This is
absolutely true.

“The world is filled with people who lead reluctant lives because they never had to be born; nobody possibly can—while he or she is on the way to fulfilling a fate—find any contrary evidence in him or her that could disprove this truth.”

“It is plain to see that people keep growing. The minds and matter are in a state of change. Anything that doesn't move is for growth. And they primarily believe that people need to be born in order to grow. Now, one must consider how one achieves this growth. The answer lies in achieving harmony by synthesizing dual contradictions. After you breathe in, you always breathe out. You ceaselessly continue to do so, even late at night, without ever feeling reluctant about it. You always harmonize these two conflicting actions of inhalation and exhalation. After you eat, you get hungry. After you get hungry, you eat. You wake up, and then you sleep. You sleep, and then you wake up. You repeat these processes energetically, cheerfully, punctually, and, consequently, harmonize. Isn't this how we achieve growth every day? To understand how our human world has grown until now you must see the cycle of birth and death, of death and birth; you must see that life and death are two faces of the same coin. It's taught that the world has been reborn many times prior to arriving at the state it's in today. If you realize this, can you not also then see that there's a road to growth made possible by being made to be born in a place where all dualities collapse? Where a thesis and an antithesis can collide to achieve a wonderful synthesis? The face of a human being always faces outward, toward a distance, does it not? There's no one who has his or her face turned toward himself, you see. When two people talk to each other, the reason why they can reach an agreement is because they're, in effect, two individuals with outwardly looking faces, facing each other. However great or smart a person may be, no one can see his own face all by himself. It's only when he looks into the mirror that he can for the first time gain knowledge of his own.”

[RyeCather · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Pauline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book - which I just mindlessly picked from a shelf in Kinokuniya in Shinjuku - turned out to be so beautiful and so well-written. These are two of my favorite paragraphs:

"A happiness that hinges on how far you can remove yourself from a ruinous death, how much you can keep your mind off it, is no happiness at all; it's nothing. The higher such a tower of precarious happiness becomes, the more your inevitable fall -- your destiny of falling from a height one day -- will end up rewritten as a tragedy."

"This is what I believe: that true happiness must be intimate with death, that true happiness is indeed a happiness that is found ever so close to death, ever so close to the surface of its sea."

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somberly Sexy

This was a thought-provoking and introspective novel that explores the complexities of the human condition through a unique blend of Japanese culture, philosophy, and eroticism.

The book is quite long, but it's worth the investment as the author's writing style is captivating, transporting you to the beautiful landscapes of Japan and immersing you in the story.

The novel delves into deep and melancholy themes that may resonate with some readers while others may find it a bit too introspective.

The book also features a lot of buddhist philosophy which may or may not be of interest to readers (it sure didn't interest me).

Overall, the book is a rich and well-crafted narrative that offers a unique reading experience.

3.4/5

[Franco · Rating 4 out of 5]

“人類到底為什麽要這樣做，我卻無法了解。因為創造他人的生命，等同於創造他人的死亡。生下那個人，也就是殺死那個人。女性無視於自身的死亡，輕易地持續孕育出他人的死亡。她們想也沒想過，生子就是把那孩子推向死亡的行為。自己才是不折不扣的殺人者，卻壓根也沒發現。”.........

我心中尚未崩壞的部分
作者：白石一文

[Yan]

没懂

[Sam’s Bookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

只有失望不让人失望。

[Patrick Hanlon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was quite engaging and it was a rare book to feature such a damaged and damaging main character. There were times when I was quite sympathetic to his character but found him repugnant a paragraph later. I found this aspect of the main character quite jarring at times but in the end the hope that he finds redemption in the end kept me hanging on each word as the story unfolded. I found the newsworthy events that emerged in the last few chapters undermined what Shiraishi was working toward throughout the book, but perhaps I would see the fit better upon a second reading. It might be worth that.

I'd also add that it was quite intriguing to have a first person narrator/main character obsess himself with dates and times the way he did. It is something that is more common in an espionage novel but in that instance the atmosphere of the book would lend itself to that timekeeping. Here, when the questions about about the meaning of life and the forces that propel or control it, it is interesting to have time demarcated throughout as a reminder of one of the things that these characters occupy. An intriguing, memorable, at times shocking, read.

[Wesley Cheong · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this book in Kinokuniya and decided to just pick this up, and definitely don't regret it. It's a story that follows Naoto as he tries to discover the purpose of life through the people around him as well as his relationships with various characters.

Naoto as a character can be highly dislikable at times, but the intent of Shiraishi isn't for us to love this character - but to empathize with Naoto, who's broken in many ways. I don't agree with Naoto's philosophy and outlook on many things as they come off very pretentious and pseudo-intellectual, but it inspired me to think a little more deeply about life, love, happiness, and the relationships with the people around me.

[Rex Fausett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the last part where they explained to me what it was all about but, yes, I figured that out by myself. (Six points to Gryffindor!) This is a person who lives a superficial, selfish life yet works hard at his chosen trade. He throws away opportunities and women while seeking the meaning of life, which turned out to be death. I tend to agree with his final decision that if you have reconciled with your inevitable death, you can stop worrying about it and live. In the meantime, the quantity of alcohol this guy consumes is alarming. As noted in another review, the ending was slightly unsatisfactory but I'm thinking alcohol poisoning might be a factor.

[brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

kinda disappointed in the lack of closure in the ending, though it sort of fits the whole theme and attitude of the narrator

the narrator had a really interesting outlook on living that was muddied a tiny bit by pseudo-intellectual mumbo jumbo that sometimes landed and sometimes seemed to just run around in circles

overall a pretty fun read, though

[Irena]

與其讓你瞭解我

我寧願我是一個謎

一個解不開的離題

真和假的秘密

扣你心弦的遊戲

—— 阿信

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

What it is to be a human, warts and all. Brilliant.

[Jikan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Natasha Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a funny book. I usually dislike books/narrators like this one (endless navel-gazing which takes itself far too seriously), but The Part of Me That Isn't Broken Inside is sparse, straightforward (and semi-frequently uncomfortably graphic). I enjoyed it. I can't say why, and I definitely skipped over some most of the philosophical musings, but something about the narrator’s i-novel-styled internal monologue rang true with me - when I read it, I felt the strangest sense of melancholy. The references to Mishima are nice, and of course, a fantastic job by a new translator, Raj Mahtani.

[Brooke Salaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

First person narrative told by a young man working in print media in modern Japan. Brutally honest and often oppressive in the unvarnished look at the futility, boredom, just plain unhealthiness, mental and physical in a “successful” life of material outer achievement. The narrator, Naoto, has female companionship pretty much whenever he seeks it but it is all very “take it or leave it it’s all the same to me” in his approach. He has different women for different moods whether he feels like briefly engaging in protective feelings toward the young son of one or sexual perversion and decadence with another. Naoto is almost comical in his utter lack of empathy though he ponders Buddhist ideals of living for others we see little to no evidence of him acting on them. He has such a low opinion of himself, he does not see that his actions have any impact or that they may cause suffering. The root of his hollowness seems to be his abandonment by his mother on a trip to the zoo when he was not yet 3. The women are uniformly one dimensional with the possible exception of the one who allowed him to use a temple as a study hall when he was a young student. I was drawn into his descriptions of the dissipated, aimless life of an intelligent young career man who is also struggling to find a purpose for existence. Overall recommended.

[kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

my favorite book of all time. read it for the first time age 17, not long after it was translated/published in the US – I bought it on a whim based on the title at the NYC Kinokuniya. At nearly 21 now I still revisit this book often– or rather, it is never out of my mind. Some passages feel resident, verbatim, within my heart of hearts. An incredible read and the characters of Naoto and Eriko are deeply affecting, with the former making me hate him and then love him with a whiplash, and the latter feeling very personal to me. I feel a visceral connection to this book. In the fantastic afterword/translator's note, I learned that Shiraishi read Camus' The Stranger at a young age, middle school I think, and it profoundly impacted him and his attitude towards writing. I, too, read The Stranger in middle school and it changed my trajectory as a reader, thinker, and aspiring writer. How incredible. It feels like magic that I discovered this book when I did and it is a *part of me* in a very special way. Highly recommend for fans of the "I" novel, or for people that make sense of the world through introspection.

[Nian · Rating 3 out of 5]

看过最精辟的书评是 "文以载道". 这么一想觉得这书还挺有意思的.

[!Tæmbuŝu]

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