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The Silent Cry

Kenzaburō Ōe,

John Bester (Translator)

3.86 · Rating details · 2,867 ratings · 244 reviews

The Silent Cry traces the uneasy relationship between two brothers who return to their ancestral home, a village in densely forested western Japan. While one brother tries to sort out the after-effects of a friend's suicide and the birth of a retarded son, the other embarks on a quixotic mission to incite an uprising among the local youth. Oe's description of this brother' ...more

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Paperback, 274 pages

Published July 7th 1994 by Kodansha International (first published 1967)

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Jul 30, 2017 Steven Godin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, japan, nobel-laureates

Kenzaburō Ōe uses an historical 1860 uprising as the basis for his dark novel of two bothers soul-searching, and enduring a personal crisis in postwar Japan, a world where existence and myth deliquesce to form a disturbing picture of the human predicament. With reverberating touches of Dostoevsky and Mishima, Ōe's powerful story concerns that of Mitsusaburo, the married older brother living and working out of Tokyo, and Takashi, young and confident returning from the United States after being in Kenzaburō Ōe uses an historical 1860 uprising as the basis for his dark novel of two bothers soul-searching, and enduring a personal crisis in postwar Japan, a world where existence and myth deliquesce to form a disturbing picture of the human predicament. With reverberating touches of Dostoevsky and Mishima, Ōe's powerful story concerns that of Mitsusaburo, the married older brother living and working out of Tokyo, and Takashi, young and confident returning from the United States after being involved in anti-American student protests. Both left their respectable remote home in the forested valley of Shikoku years before, but return to take part in the sale of their land and ancestral storehouse to a Korean supermarket boss, or emperor as he is viewed.
Both brothers get caught up in a rather distressing state of affairs, with locals, themselves more than anything, loved ones, and a past best left in the history books.

The story itself is multi-layered, driven forward with anguish and foreboding, but also with a lingering hope and sense of redemption. There are many bleak passages of writing that were fiercely alarming, but just so well written after a somewhat laboured opening, while the overall tone of the narrative felt like a cloak of darkness, with just a tiny opening for letting the sun of a morning horizon seduce your eyes, to witness a beauty through the engulfing chaos.
There is a significant subplot, mostly revealed through reminiscences, about the history of the village and the boys family during the past one hundred years or so, it's murky and unclear to grasp hold of this side of proceedings at first, and only becomes more apparent by the end, however for me at least, I still felt slightly unsure of the satisfactory answers. Linking the past with their present lives, themes of strong family loyalty and honour, personal responsibility, economic degradation, racism, and self-liberation are explored in an acute way, with Ōe not afraid to hold back with some truly shocking lines that were upsetting to read, but wholly necessary.

Under normal circumstances this novel may for some feel a little contrived, had it been set in a country other than Japan it would probably would be, I find with most Japanese literature there is something buried deep inside that's difficult to fully comprehend for an outsider, but that never falls into the category of monotony reading. I am not going to lie, it's harsh and sombre nature so nearly got the better of me,, but on a lighter level (not nearly enough) Ōe does portray rural Japan in fascinating clarity, and brings this world to life right in front of you. For me, I believe Oe's Nobel prize was fully justified for his insight and humanity, and there was enough in the meaning and quality of the writing here that tells me this undoubtedly is rightly viewed as a masterpiece of postwar Japanese fiction, tainted with an irreparably spirited notion of being written in ancestral blood. ...more

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Sep 05, 2013 J. rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: japan

This is a very difficult read, not as in 'dense' but as in 'unpleasant'. And made no easier by the author's resolve to lead the narrative to the most intentionally uncomfortable places he can imagine; there is to be no outlet or uplift at any point in the novel, and we can tell from the first few pages. For the rest of the book we will be encircled by fear, constraint, control, fate and deep mood swings.

We're led down the emotional plumbing along with a kind of numb / punchdrunk narrator, whose This is a very difficult read, not as in 'dense' but as in 'unpleasant'. And made no easier by the author's resolve to lead the narrative to the most intentionally uncomfortable places he can imagine; there is to be no outlet or uplift at any point in the novel, and we can tell from the first few pages. For the rest of the book we will be encircled by fear, constraint, control, fate and deep mood swings.

We're led down the emotional plumbing along with a kind of numb / punchdrunk narrator, whose brief time describing his life to us comprises a chamber of horrors and an unending set of even-worse consequences. A list of same would be too much in a review, but pick a form of violence, a human failing, a deformity of nature, an offense against society, against family, incest, suicide-- it's here, but meant in a broader, umbrella sense. His concerns are the philosophical structures of the Japanese national persona, and the inherited national flaws he sees.

The Japanese in 1967 were still trying to make sense of the links between the hyperloyalist shogun tradition, the authoritarian cult of empire, and the cabin-fever shock and guilt that made the postwar era so unstable. We feel the infantilized shame and post-fascist surreality of Witold Gombrowicz in the proceedings. And maybe some Beckett, as well; there is a sleepwalker's logic to the course of the book, in fulfillment of what can only be said to be pre-ordained. The failures here, though, are the inability to balance the shock of the distasteful with the familiarity of the obvious, in the way that Beckett was able to do, at once deft and disarming. Mr. Ōe wants no such pretty 'balance' in his attack on the senses. ( Also on the negative side of the equation, there is plenty here that is kind of wifty-cosmic ala Vonnegut, or deliberately obtuse, grotesque in a way we'd now recognize as the tactic of director David Lynch.)

The onslaught of intimidation and dread the narrator feels bounces back and forth from an internalization of events to the formation of a complex analogy of those same, or similar, outside occurrences. The string of disaster and violence our author observes from day to day becomes a kind of personal 'disgrace loop' for which he blames himself. And in analyzing and agonizing about that blame, the dishonorable flaws of the society are reflected. And in taking the blame, back around the loop again.

There are worlds within this novel that this reader can't claim to know about; the rebellions & disturbances in Japan in the 60's were different from other places, and so was the nation. It must also be noted that the author's own biography mirrors at least some of what goes on. A disabled child wasn't just a fiction for this book; the author was father to a similar case. Ōe knew Henry Miller and Sartre, and aspects of their viewpoints appear throughout. He met with Mao Tse Tung. A thorough study of the novel would include at least some familiarity with the author's intriguing biographical details.

There is a desolate sense here that the more reasonable the man, the worse and more relentless the nightmares he must internalize. And Hiroshima towers blackly above the entire conception here, mentioned only once or twice, but crackling like an electric current at the edges.

Closing the back cover on this book, emerging from the 'disgrace loop', feels like walking out of a prison. A prison of blunted, hurtful ambiguities.
Aaarrgh. ...more

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Oct 25, 2017 Zak rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

A mesmerising read. Mesmerising not in a beautiful, sweetly lyrical sense but gripping, dark and brutally frank. Piercing, insightful metaphors and phrases abound. The opening chapter was so amazing, I thought I had found another 'Vegetarian'. Alas, the one drawback was that I found the plot, based on a present day uprising aimed at reenacting another which happened a hundred years before, not very interesting in and of itself. It would have been better if the middle part, which dwelled a bit to ...more

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Dec 25, 2016 Daniel Clausen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

***I’ve tried to eliminate the spoilers; but be WARNED -- somewhat spoilery***

Early in the novel, the main character, Mitsu, finds himself in the pit where his septic tank will soon go. He goes into the pit to think. The position is symbolic, as everything is in this novel -- a graphic depiction of his psychological state and our place in the novel. The world has become a septic tank and Mitsu is looking for a way out of the pit.

Set in the early to mid-1960s, in a small town in Japan, the novel ***I’ve tried to eliminate the spoilers; but be WARNED -- somewhat spoilery***

Early in the novel, the main character, Mitsu, finds himself in the pit where his septic tank will soon go. He goes into the pit to think. The position is symbolic, as everything is in this novel -- a graphic depiction of his psychological state and our place in the novel. The world has become a septic tank and Mitsu is looking for a way out of the pit.

Set in the early to mid-1960s, in a small town in Japan, the novel depicts the struggle of two brothers over the meaning of history and the future of their town. Each, it seems has been designated a role (by history and the natural, horrific flows of the universe) -- Mitsu, the role of the dispassionate establishment figure; Takashi, the role of the revolutionary figure and tragic martyr.

Without spoiling the novel, I’ll say that it’s perhaps one of the most poignant political novels you could read today (despite being written in the 60s). Relevant themes abound -- racism (toward Koreans), a popular uprising, the shunning of intellectuals, the populist leader who leads by his gut, the thrill of revolution.

In the figure of Takashi you can see shades of Trump or Dutertre -- over-stylized machismo, a fascination with violence and virility, and an intellectual vacuum in place of coherent ideology. In the figure of Mitsu, you see the opposite (but also Takashi’s enabler) -- a despondent “establishment” figure, a principled pacifism that is often equated with sterility, and an aloof rationalism with no coherent answer to the energy of Takashi’s movement.

The “revolution” itself is an absurd, intoxicating spectacle that has the power to entrance, compel, and mystify...but is also essentially empty.

The most compelling and touching aspect of the book is the relationship of the two brothers. The two often seem to have the power to save one another, but tragically are unable to because they inhabit worlds with irreconcilable worldviews.

The politics of the book are stylized with a macabre surrealism not unlike the work of HP Lovecraft. Terrible things lurk just out of vision and appear in unexpected places. Death. Suicide. Retardation. Venereal diseases. These things stick out like warts in the first few pages and highlight the monstrous conditions of modern life. The characters appear with monstrous deformities and the habits of creatures -- a hermit, a character with a deformed eye, and a fat blob. With all these everyday creatures, the mythical “chosokabe” of the Shikoku forests is the least terrifying one.

On a personal level, the book got me thinking about modernity and modern life. It seems all too often that modern life offers us up routines and functions in place of meaning. The book starts with the main character discovering that his friend has committed suicide by painting his face crimson, sticking a cucumber up his anus, and hanging himself. I’m pretty sure that if I did the same thing in my office my action would largely go unnoticed, until I was called upon to do something important. Then, when my unique problem needed to be “handled” the question of the day would be which department would handle my dead body and who would take care of the paperwork. The dry, corporate platitudes that would then follow would only highlight the fact that most people were barely aware of who I was or what I did.

Luckily, I have no such inclinations. Besides, the whole thing seems to me a waste of a perfectly good cucumber.

More than anything the book makes me thrilled that I lived to be an adult with a really bad literature addiction.
...more

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May 07, 2009 Curtis Westman rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2009

Silent Cry, by Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe, takes place in Japan in the late 1960s, following Mitsusaburo, his wife Natsumi and his brother, Takashi as they return to the rural valley community where Mitsu's family has lived for over a century. Mitsu is an anti-hero of the lowest calibre -- weak-willed, ugly and inert -- and from the beginning of the novel there is a significant amount of tension in his marriage as Natsu has succumbed to alcoholism.

The opening of the novel sees Mitsu finding Silent Cry, by Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe, takes place in Japan in the late 1960s, following Mitsusaburo, his wife Natsumi and his brother, Takashi as they return to the rural valley community where Mitsu's family has lived for over a century. Mitsu is an anti-hero of the lowest calibre -- weak-willed, ugly and inert -- and from the beginning of the novel there is a significant amount of tension in his marriage as Natsu has succumbed to alcoholism.

The opening of the novel sees Mitsu finding himself crouched at the bottom of a hollowed-out pit formed for a Septic Tank, ruminating on the recent suicide of his friend. Alone and pitiful, he tells of his infant son locked away in an institution after an operation to remove a tumour from his head left him a near vegetable. Like so much refuse, he has no job and no one in which he can confide. He is called a rat, and he adopts the persona, becoming rat like in his behaviour.

When his brother returns from America they travel, along with his brother's teenaged protégées, to the valley of their ancestors. Mitsu spurns Takashi for his juvenile behaviour, though Takashi is confident and charismatic, as his brother wants to follow in the footsteps of their great-great-uncle who, in 1860, started a rebellion in the village.

A main notion in Silent Cry is that of truth and the consequences of it. Truth is hard to come by in the novel, with Taka and Mitsu often remembering their childhoods differently, correcting one another over and over as they relate their past experiences. In the same way, the truth about the affair in 1860 is revised constantly throughout the novel as more facts are revealed to the brothers. This is combined with an extensive use of dream imagery to deliberately mislead the reader, along with the main characters, so that the morality of their actions is never solidly identified. Gravely, Mitsu's entire view of history and his brother comes into question by the end of the novel, and the reader is brought into this upheaval in a very real way. Throughout the entire story, we are made, despite his imperfections, to sympathise with Mitsusaburo. Though pitiable, he is also the pillar of reason among the strange cult-like behavior of the other characters following his brother. In this way, not only do we blindly agree with his interpretation of the past, but we also spurn his brother -- both in action and in philosophy -- and consider him petulant, impulsive and ineffectual. By the end of the novel, however, this perspective is made to change. Just as Mitsu must re-evaluate his entire way of thinking about his brother, so too must we, as Mitsu's complicit followers, re-evaluate what we have read thus far, and how we feel about the characters.

In one sense, it is extremely effective as the reader is led to believe certain truths exactly as the characters. In another, however, it's frustrating because by the end of the novel we are so ingrained in our repulsion towards Takashi that to change our opinions is nearly impossible. Looking for Mitsu to succeed for such a long time only to be disappointed when his success is dependent on his brother's philosophies is tough to swallow.

More frustrating still is, aptly, the issue of the writing of the novel itself. Kenzaburo Oe writes exclusively in Japanese, and as such the novel is translated by a Western author. In a way that eerily parallels the passage of truth in the novel, we must read the text through the eyes and words of an interloper, an observer to the chaos we're reading. It is impossible to know what liberties have been taken -- what images are created by this third-party that are not, perhaps, what Oe intended. Due in part to the paranoid pursuit of truth demonstrated by Mitsu and Takashi, we also yearn for truth, both in the story and in its very construction. And yet, just as Mitsusaburo, we must place our faith in the words of another in order to do so.

Though chaotic and dense, the novel is well-written and the characters are lively and numerous. The setting of the quiet valley town torn apart by modernization and a new generation is fleshed out well, and throughout the novel the internal monologue of the self-described rat, Mitsu, provides a framework through which we can relive events in his life and the lives of his ancestors in a unique and effective way. ...more

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Aug 09, 2015 S̶e̶a̶n̶ added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016

Everything around me—the dark brown stretches of withered grassland where the snow had completely vanished, leaving the soil parched and powerless as yet to put forth new life, even the somber evergreen heights of the forest beyond the groves of great deciduous trees—had an air of indefinable loss, like the dead ruin of a human being, that awoke an obscure uneasiness in me as my gaze roved across the hollow.

This is one of those novels where all the characters are miserable and bad things are

Everything around me—the dark brown stretches of withered grassland where the snow had completely vanished, leaving the soil parched and powerless as yet to put forth new life, even the somber evergreen heights of the forest beyond the groves of great deciduous trees—had an air of indefinable loss, like the dead ruin of a human being, that awoke an obscure uneasiness in me as my gaze roved across the hollow.

This is one of those novels where all the characters are miserable and bad things are constantly happening to each of them. Meanwhile, the text is suffused with an oppressive foreboding that even worse events and/or revelations lurk in the distance. To complicate reading matters, the first third or so of the book moves at a glacial pace, smothering everything in its slow-moving wake. I almost abandoned it after about 100 pages but then I read reviews reporting that the action picks up later on. And so I heaved the yoke back up across my shoulders and trudged on, only to be rewarded with even more suffering and misery, but at least it started arriving faster.

The setting is a rural valley in post-WWII Japan where two brothers have returned to their family homestead, one from living abroad in America and the other, the narrator, from his middle-class life as a translator in Tokyo. Narrator is depressed, triggered by his best friend's ominous suicide, and his wife is descending into alcoholism following the birth of their genetically impaired child. The ghosts of dead siblings haunt the two brothers upon their return to the valley. What follows is borne out by the long-lasting effects of war and family history.

No star rating seems appropriate here. Ōe's style is more ornate than I typically prefer, but it fits the subject matter. Some books are not 'enjoyable reads' per se, but that does not necessarily mean they should not be read. This book delves deep into human nature and human experience, which for me provided reason enough not to look away. It's worth it alone for the rush of revelations that come in the final chapter. ...more

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Mar 13, 2012 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: big-red-circle

You can read Oe's books without visiting his hometown (obviously) but I'm still so ashamed that I visited his hometown without having read "Prize Stock", "Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids" or "The Silent Cry". What did I think I was doing?

"The Silent Cry" was brutal. Kenzaburo must be the most honest man on the planet. I have no idea how his friends and family can live with his writing. Yukio Mishima said something nice for the dust jacket, but I bet he winced his way through this. Ouch. It's like O ...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Guillermo Galvan rated it it was amazing

I finished The Silent Cry right before the window of July shut for eternity. My reading of the book is locked away from me by an invisible wall that materialized overnight. I am glad of this because Oe’s book terrified me. In fact, The Silent Cry is the most frightening book I've ever read.

The Silent Cry is about a depressed intellectual who returns to his ancestral village with his younger brother who plans to incite the young men to overthrow a local Korean businessman, "The Emperor of the Sup ...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Smiley rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, japan

Acclaimed by the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature committee for its dealing "with people's relationships ... in a confusing world" (back cover), this novel is psychologically complex due to its context primarily related on "the clash between village life and modern culture in postwar Japan" (Paris Review: The Art of Fiction No. 195) as perceived and involved by the narrator temporarily living there with his wife, his brother and a few followers. One of the complex issues is that Oe has tried to ex Acclaimed by the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature committee for its dealing "with people's relationships ... in a confusing world" (back cover), this novel is psychologically complex due to its context primarily related on "the clash between village life and modern culture in postwar Japan" (Paris Review: The Art of Fiction No. 195) as perceived and involved by the narrator temporarily living there with his wife, his brother and a few followers. One of the complex issues is that Oe has tried to explore such life and culture by means of ‘I’ called Mitsu as the key protagonist who duly observes and reacts. Moreover, writing a comment on this complex novel by a formidable Japanese author is demanding and could be controversial, therefore, I would like to share my views with my Goodreads friends on some good points so that we can understand more on why we should read him enjoyably, that is, any one of his works to which we incline.

First, reading this novel needs our concentration; it is observed by one of his translators that Oe has famously written his works in short sentences similar to those in foreign novels, presumably in English ones, so they are relatively convenient for translation. As far as I know, he accepts this comment and says it’s natural for him to write his novels with short Japanese sentences. This aspect of writing poses a problem to his readers since whenever they browse through some pages in his novels, they tend to assume that they seem readable and simple. However, that’s necessary for us to be aware of the first obstacle that we need to learn not to be trapped by their seeming simplicity.

Second, Mitsu portrayed as a man aged twenty-seven (p. 1) having a child born mentally handicapped (p. 34) with his no sight regarding his right eye (p. 2) is an ordinary, not god-like man who realizes his weaknesses and does his best to cope with his everyday life before meeting his brother called Taka while living in the village and after the unthinkably tragic incident. His wife named Natsumi (p. 274) having started her whiskey-drinking (p. 29) reads Soseki Natsume (p. 107) while he reads the Penguin books (p. 108), translates and has his English teaching job (p. 272). He is also unfairly looked upon by a youth who bluntly complains, “You’re not a bit like him. You’re just a rat. What did you come to meet Taka today?” (p. 29). With his dark humor, he simply says, "I'm ugly." (p. 2) These suggest his bitter tormented life deep inside and we wonder how he should manage such looming unpredictable problems.

Third, I think this novel is one among the few that require our rereading for more understanding and interpretation. One of the reasons is that we may find reading it quite simple, that is, understandable at face value. Indeed, Oe has written to expose Mitsue’s adversities in dealing with social/ethical issues adopted by Taka, his brother to commit such an abominable sin while living in the village till he can’t find any sensible solution and that’s why he’s still left some problems to other people to solve. However, we can notice that Mitsue’s wife has become more sober and sensible toward the end of the novel. This initiative wisely implies drinking whisky isn’t the good means in solving any problem and she’s told Mitsue about “bringing up the two babies together” (p. 272) and I found this excerpt moving:

“I was thinking about that for ages last night, Mitsue, and I began to feel that if only we have the courage we can make a start on it at least,” she said in a voice pathetic in its obvious physical and spiritual exhaustion. … Then, as I walked toward her, I heard a voice inside me reciting quite simply what Takashi’s bodyguards had said when they announced their plan to get married: “Now that we don’t have Taka, we’ll have to manage by ourselves” And I had no mind to squash the voice into silence.
… (p. 273)

Therefore, ‘courage’ is the key and we need to learn to keep going by ourselves, in other words, living by mostly depending on others is not wise, they may not be amused since everyone is busy working, QED.

In short, this novel is worth reading and rereading for reinterpretations for the sake of our fellow humans that, more or less, need compassion, resilience and wisdom. ...more

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Oct 22, 2015 Emily Hughes rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This was a pretty hard one, might have to read it again to let everything settle clearer. Think Japanese Dostoyevsky- familial 'curses', unspoken shame and pain and it's eventual tear in the fibres of being. Totally brutal.

On top of that, add the eerie layer of social upheaval that is acutely relevant today.

The Korean/Japanese conflict reflects a lot of the frustrating fear-racist thought that we're still dealing with today- which only adds to the frustration that Mitsu has (and looking further This was a pretty hard one, might have to read it again to let everything settle clearer. Think Japanese Dostoyevsky- familial 'curses', unspoken shame and pain and it's eventual tear in the fibres of being. Totally brutal.

On top of that, add the eerie layer of social upheaval that is acutely relevant today.

The Korean/Japanese conflict reflects a lot of the frustrating fear-racist thought that we're still dealing with today- which only adds to the frustration that Mitsu has (and looking further, that Kenzaburo Oe being a pacifist has as well) when looking at the seemingly futile effort of the Japanese banding together 'everyone's disgraced themselves equally' to revenge themselves on the 'outsider' -the Koreans (who unwillingly were forced into labour camps and prospered amid their adversity). It is a hard balance to weigh- the uprising and new awareness in the locals of their history- is it worth the disruption and prejudice it further spurs? Is that upheaval necessary to become equals within the valley or does it only widen the gap?

The two brothers also deal with their own personal pains- both identifying with relatives they have limited understanding about- and in turn trying to live and act upon those ideals. Both dealing with personal destructive inner forces in their own ways, different but kindred in their isolation.

Oe does a brilliant job of trying to always throw you off your perspective...

'I have to get rid of my preconceived ideas about Great Grandfather's brother and Takahashi... To understand them correctly may be meaningless to them now that they're dead but for me it's essential'

This is how I felt through the whole book in general- throughout the book you are taking apart characters, looking inside and reassembling them, this made the book quite hard to get through.

I feel like this quote provides even greater insight to the struggle. If only we could all find it essential to look deep into history to look into the people and reasons that cause cultural regress, separatist fear and senseless violence and stop it from doing further damage as we see happening on a regular basis today.

On another note, the translation is electric and vivid- I enjoyed his thoughtful style. ...more

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Feb 28, 2020 Diana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: kenzaburo-oe, philosophical-fiction, japanese-literature, existentialism, nobel-prize-winners

The Silent Cry [1967/1988] – ★★★★★

In The Silent Cry, we are presented with the early 1960s and Mitsu, a disillusioned husband to an alcoholic wife and a father to a child who is now in an institution. Mitsu sees his life changing when his estranged brother Takashi arrives from America and together they travel to their native village in Shikoku, one of the main islands in Japan. There, they find that there is a shift in local power and one rich Korean magnate is proposing to buy what remains of M The Silent Cry [1967/1988] – ★★★★★

In The Silent Cry, we are presented with the early 1960s and Mitsu, a disillusioned husband to an alcoholic wife and a father to a child who is now in an institution. Mitsu sees his life changing when his estranged brother Takashi arrives from America and together they travel to their native village in Shikoku, one of the main islands in Japan. There, they find that there is a shift in local power and one rich Korean magnate is proposing to buy what remains of Mitsu and Takashi’s land inheritance – their storehouse. Reluctantly, Mitsu finds himself drawn into a complicated political situation of the village, while also realising that Takashi starts to wield the unprecedented power over the village inhabitants. The Silent Cry is a slow-paced descent into one kind of a nightmare where the violent history of the village is about to be re-enacted and other grim discoveries made as the relationship between the two brothers takes an unexpected turn. Full of uneasiness and foreboding, The Silent Cy is a subtly powerful work that masterfully evokes the unsaid, the forbidden and the terrifying, getting us close to the real Truth and to the final Hope. It really becomes one of those books you do not have to enjoy, but to simply experience and live through.

There is a curious narration coming from a pitiful, nearly blind husband Mitsu, whose wife Natsumi is suffering from alcoholism. Mitsu is a person stuck in his existential crisis and afraid to face reality. “Awakening in a predawn darkness, I grope among the anguished remnants of dreams that linger in my consciousness, in search of some ardent sense of expectation”, starts the book...“I’ve been sleeping with arms and legs askew, in the posture of a man reluctant to be reminded either of his nature or of the situation in which he finds himself” [Ōe/Bester, 1967/88: 1]. Recently, Mitsu and Natsumi put their only disabled child in an institution and are still in shock because of the recent death of Mitsu’s close friend who died after he painted his head red and hanged himself. When Mitsu’s brother Takashi arrives from America, the mood of Mitsu and Natsumi is momentarily lifted, and we witness a strange internal competition and tension between the brothers. The trio, together with Takashi’s “teenage bodyguards”, then travel to the home village of the brothers, populated by some eccentric characters. There, there is “a delicate balance of power between people and authorities” [Ōe/Bester, 1967/88: 263], and one rich businessman from Korea plans to buy the land of Takashi and Mitsu’s ancestors. Inspired by the history of the village, Takashi tries to rebel, gathering his followers around him. In turn, his brother Mitsu feigns indifference until he can no longer ignore the affairs of the village or his brother’s wild actions which are increasingly directed specifically at him.

Perhaps one way to understand The Silent Cry would be to draw connections between – (i) one person (Mitsu) – (ii) a family unit (Mitsu’s family) – (iii) a village (the one in Shikoku) and – (iv) a nation (Japan). The history, experience, feelings and thoughts of each of those entities/units are reflected in all the rest. The brothers in the story appear opposites of each other: one – a passive, unpopular introvert, another – a dominant, popular extrovert; one – beautiful and another – ugly; one – repressed and wants to forget his family/village past, and another wants to face and “re-enact it”, while marching forward; one wants to deny his state of being human, and another wants to embrace his “creatureness”. So, these brothers and their polar opposite characteristics also represent two sides of Japan after the war or as it reflects on its own history. One side of Japan or a village in Shikoku is forward-looking and craves change, while another part wants to stick to tradition and inaction. The story becomes one where different people are trying to employ different means to come to terms and accept one’s past or seek justification for their previous actions (Japan tries to come to terms with its participation in the WWII; the village tries to acknowledge its past silent acceptance of brutal feudal regimes and violent revolts, and one family (that of Mitsu) tries to understand the deaths of its family members. People in the village are portrayed as so used to pain, that they are no longer realising or recognising this experience -“they fuss for ages over trivialities, with the irresponsible notion that when things finally get quite out of hand the situation will somehow change and solve their difficulties for them” [Ōe/Bester, 1967/88: 69]. In turn, Mitsu is trying to deal with his guilt and shame associated with his disabled son (and also with his brother). Alcohol, sex, sport, active re-enactments of past events, solitude and withdrawal – many means are employed to understand and come to terms with what was going on and still ongoing in the lives of the characters.

In the village of Shikoku, history may just about to repeat itself as the Korean businessman’s supermarket becomes the object of awe and the person behind it is soon associated with some “foreign” evil. Since everyone in Mitsu’s immediate family is a societal outcast (Mitsu has a facial deformity, his wife is an alcoholic and his brother has ties with “foreign” America), they become unlikely “heroes” or central figures in the growing collective madness and depravity, as they see feelings of violence, anarchy and death descent onto the village. One village disaster or perversion follows another in a swift succession to unsettle everyone. It is at this point that Ōe brings the depressive, the ugly and the grotesque to the surface in his story and makes everyone acknowledge that it is also humanity, and the denying of this truth for too long will have dire consequences. In that way, Ōe tries to heal the collective wounds through his narrative or at least to expose the wounds to the fullest so that they would have a chance of healing.

There is much in the novel about death. There is a human tendency to obsess over those who have died and the dead are often accorded the reverence since they are perceived as being the people who already gained the “ultimate knowledge”, but paid the highest and ultimate price for it, too: “Death cuts abruptly the warp of understanding. There are things which the survivors are never told. And the survivors have a steadily deepening suspicion that it is precisely because of the things incapable of communication that the deceased has chosen death. The factors that remain ill defined may sometimes lead a survivor to the very site of the disaster, but even then the only thing clear to anyone concerned is that he has been brought up against something incomprehensible” [Ōe/Bester, 1967/88: 1].

The forest in the story possesses one dreamy atmosphere that helps to erase the line between the past and the present, sinking us deep into that memory, dream or past history which is often told through second-hand accounts (“the power of the forest is growing” [1967/88: 55]). These second-hand accounts put a distance between us and what was or is happening, giving a strong impression of a now forgotten fable. Whether something is true/reality or false/a myth becomes hard to say. What really happened to the older brother of Takashi and Mitsu or to their sister? And, who started the uprising of 1860? How these events relate to the present? One cannot escape from something that has already become part of one, and all the characters experience this at some point. Japan, the village and the characters are still nursing the wounds of the past, which are bathed in shame. Unlike the western concept of “guilt”, the Japanese concept of “shame” cannot be just “cleansed through penance” or be “forgiven by the Lord”. Shame takes its root deep in the human psyche and often can only be dealt with by taking public, violent actions (self-annihilation). By and by, personal considerations and history in the novel necessarily and seamlessly fuse with a broader communal history and consciousness, and such elements as the forest and the storehouse start to stand for something else, such as consciousness or a safe-haven, making the novel rich with thinly-disguised symbolism.

The way Kenzaburō Ōe writes, it seems that the full meaning is within our reach only to escape us at the very last second, leaving us bewildered but also intrigued. The same happens with the characters in this novel, who are always being just on the brink of realisation and understanding, but, at the very last moment, end up too preoccupied with trivialities, taking a step back. The Silent Cry probably has too “comfortable” of an ending, but Ōe must still be applauded for making the experience and the narrative so transformative.

It is impossible not to fall under the haunting spell of Kenzaburo Ōe. The Silent Cry is a dark existential novel filled with unpleasantness and sorrow, but it is also an incredibly fulfilling and deep work with a spark of hope somewhere at its heart. While evoking unsettling and vivid images, the book grapples with the Truth at every corner, trying to find it in the darkness of the forest and through the relationship between the two brothers that, in turn, sheds light on the very meaning of life and the human condition. ...more

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Oct 29, 2017 Inderjit Sanghera rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A novel infused with darkness and despair, Oe’s prose eschews the ethereal style which is so inherent in Japanese literary aesthetics in favour building a of a nightmarish and phantasmagorical atmosphere, dominated by darkness and shadows, of delirious russets and refulgent with death and despair. The style is disconcerting and unsettling, a collection of mirages beneath the half-light within which he disaffected and unreliable narrator presents the novel-some, such as this description of a snow A novel infused with darkness and despair, Oe’s prose eschews the ethereal style which is so inherent in Japanese literary aesthetics in favour building a of a nightmarish and phantasmagorical atmosphere, dominated by darkness and shadows, of delirious russets and refulgent with death and despair. The style is disconcerting and unsettling, a collection of mirages beneath the half-light within which he disaffected and unreliable narrator presents the novel-some, such as this description of a snow-bound garden are surrealy beautiful;

“The lamp hanging from the eaves, aided by the reflection of the snow lying on the ground, roof and various small shrubs beneath the eaves, suffused the white garden with a luminescence that recreated the vague light of dusk”.

Yet even the apparent peace of this garden is hampered by the sight of the narrator’s half-mad brother, Takashi, running around naked beneath the gentle fall of snow-flakes, acting as a sharp blade cutting through the idyllic view. The characters are, largely, grotesque, from the narrator, Mitsusaburo, who suffers from various degrees of mental unrest, to his cynical, alcoholic wife Natsumi, with whom the narrator is unable to entertain any sexual relations following the birth of their mentally handicapped son. Various characters hover on the periphery, such as “The Emperor”, a Korean immigrant who has managed to become a successful businessman and holds the area tightly in his vice-like grip, or the many followers of the narrator’s brother Takashi. Yet the central relationsip in the novel is between Takashi and Mitusaburo, who act as the ying to one another’s yang; Mitsusaburo is cold and aloof, bogged down in intellectual musings, whilst there is something vital about Takashi, whose character is infused with a kind of mad-cap energy and a desire to re-create a conflict which took place between their great-grandfather and his brother, who led a peasant rebellion. Takashi’s desire to ferment rebellion is a mix of this sense of fatalism and his ebullience and desire to overthrow social norms and conventions, which Takashi, despite his cynicism and sense of alienation, strives to hold onto.

The novel can-at times-grate on the reader-in particular the constant monologues and dialogues discussing increasingly bizarre aspects of human nature, and Ōe is perhaps less accessible than the other great Japanese novelists, yet his works remain and important part of the Japanese cannon, as an exploration of the darker elements of Japanese society. ...more

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Apr 23, 2018 Tom Shannon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Dark book. Told through comparisons to a Japanese uprising 100 years prior, the characters struggle to find meaning and make their way forward in a small village. The influence of existentialism and especially Sartre on the telling of the story is very apparent. Using the theme of connecting to similar people in the past, the search for a life that is worthwhile eludes the characters as much as it eludes us.

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Nov 11, 2013 Lobstergirl rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Forrest Claypool

Shelves: fiction

I plucked this from the library shelf in my quest to read more serious Japanese authors, and more Nobel Prize winners (Al Gore excepted). (Literature Nobels.) Ōe was not really a household name, in my household. He merged Japanesely with other writers like Yukio Mishima, Natsume Sōseki, and Shūsaku Endō, whose names I would sometimes spot on the shelves at the local used book shop, and mostly ignore.

The Silent Cry (1967) feels like serious writing, Nobel writing, dense with meaning, although at
I plucked this from the library shelf in my quest to read more serious Japanese authors, and more Nobel Prize winners (Al Gore excepted). (Literature Nobels.) Ōe was not really a household name, in my household. He merged Japanesely with other writers like Yukio Mishima, Natsume Sōseki, and Shūsaku Endō, whose names I would sometimes spot on the shelves at the local used book shop, and mostly ignore.

The Silent Cry (1967) feels like serious writing, Nobel writing, dense with meaning, although at the same time being very readable. The pages turn easily. It has a plot, and ample character development. The protagonist, Mitsu, is about 27, recently married. He and his wife have an imbecile baby who now lives in an institution, and whose illness (involving a massive and hideous brain tumor) and imbecility haunt them, driving the wife into alcoholism. Mitsu's younger brother Takashi returns from America, where he was studying at Columbia, to Japan. At the same time, Mitsu is trying to process the suicide of a close friend who hanged himself, after painting his head crimson and stuffing a cucumber in his anus. The suicide and the retarded baby surface again and again in Mitsu's thoughts throughout the novel. Mitsu and Takashi relocate from Tokyo to their home village, in a very rural/forested area. We learn from Mitsu about his family's tragedy-strewn past: a sister, also retarded, committed suicide; an older brother was beaten to death by the local Korean community (who had been brought to Japan as slave labor). Mitsu and Takashi are also deeply fascinated by their grandfather's and great-grandfather's lives a century ago, their political actions, and the ways in which they might, or should, or should not, follow in their footsteps. The novel's imagery is vivid with blood, body fluids, grim images of violence and death. Adultery and incest also figure in. This is a clash of siblings, an ultimate sibling rivalry, as the brothers attempt to forge their identities while meditating on, and sometimes reliving or re-enacting, their family history.

The translator, John Bester, notes in an introduction the difficulty of translating Ōe, who "has been accused...of writing Japanese that reads like a translation from a Western language...the adjectives and similes with which [his sentences] are crammed prod the reader along in a rather un-Japanese way, constantly forcing him to make unexpected associations, or emphasizing the author's analytical self-awareness." "...more than most writers, he is attempting to forge a new kind of language, and it is hard for a non-Japanese to gauge the impact of his style on the Japanese reader - just how far, for instance, a particular effect is intended to be bizarre or ironic." I recommend Bester's introduction for its insightful (though brief) analysis of the novel's structure and themes. ...more

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Feb 21, 2009 Dave Russell rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

This book reminds me of why I hate baseball. The action doesn't start until the batter steps up to the plate, but before that there's a lot of waiting. First he has to take some practice swings. Then adjust his cup. Then maybe spit. Only then...no wait, one more cup adjustment.
The first 3/4 of this book was a bit of a slog to get through. I kept waiting for Oe to get to the plate, but then I got to the last two chapters and it's like he hit a stand-up triple. Everything suddenly made sense: One ...more

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Feb 06, 2013 l. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, novel-novella, japanese-lit

I don't mean to be dramatic but the climax ruined me for a few hours. I went back and reread that part so maybe that didn't help, but Oe can really pack a punch.

Other reviewers have noted echoes of Demons in this book and they're right but as much as that book meant to grade 12 me, this book was much more harrowing. I'd recommend it, but with a warning - though that would be unnecessary as the book starts immediately on a note that should alert even the most imperceptive reader to the fact that ...more

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Mar 13, 2007 Alex rated it liked it · review of another edition

Peasants, forest, revolution! Supermarket! Complementary brotherpairs, whiskey, ruffians, storehouse, ritualized violence!

Seemed diffuse and evocative. Wish I knew more about 1970s Japanese peasantry. Interesting parallels to fiction re: Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Trauma, shame, guilt, guilt, guilt.

Overwhelmingly sad. But in an abstract sense.

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Oct 09, 2008 Mona rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The story was so awesome. But, please prepare for the tiredness reading the first few pages of Indonesian version.

The tiredness didn't come from the story, but from the crowd of letters in a single-space format and type of papers used.

But I can guarantee that the book is worthed to read due to the awesomeness of Oe's storytelling.

...more

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Jan 26, 2009 Gertrude & Victoria rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: japanese-library

The Silent Cry is a more serious work than many of his other novels and give us plenty to contemplate. The plot develops and builds steadily toward a shocking climax. This is arguably Oe Kenzaburo's masterpiece. The story is filled with plenty of psychological tension in under three hundred pages.

Like all his novels, it is about family, the protagonists being two brothers, who return to their hometown from Tokyo after many years of absence. There is a stream of conflict, which builds quietly, bu ...more

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Oct 24, 2010 Andrew added it

Shelves: japanese-fiction, kenzaburo-oe

It made me think of Eraserhead. There's a deformed baby and an anxious father and a catastrophic landscape filled with grotesques. Other points of reference might be Juan Rulfo's "Pedro Paramo" and Bruno Schulz's "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass," or a sadly underappreciated Thai film called "Wonderful Town." The comparison of a Japanese novel to American, Mexican, Polish, and Thai works of art suggests a remarkably international common thread. There's all the same sense of unspeakabl ...more

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Oct 22, 2012 Kyle Muntz rated it really liked it · review of another edition

a great novel held back by a weak translation and (in my edition) a weirdly small font. still, this novel felt like the purest expression of oe's grotesque realism: fatalistic, ambiguous. it bleeds existential pain ...more

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Jan 07, 2021 Ferzair Cik Somn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I have actually put off reading this book because of the first few pages, the one that addressed a somnabulatic narrator fall into a dark pit. If you are patient, like I was well into the new year I soldiered in reading, you will be rewarded with Kenzabure Oe's masterly ways of weaving the dream into truth, history into present day, a brother to his own, a protagonist into an antagonist.
It is not ab easy breeze of a read, expected of when one is unfamiliar with Japanese internal conflict and cu ...more

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Dec 18, 2011 Frederick Glaysher rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The Silent Cry. A Novel by Kenzaburo Oe[return][return]The Global Cry…., June 24, 2000[return][return]Let me discuss “The Silent Cry” and Oe’s work in general by first sketching in a broader view of Kenzaburo Oe’s literary interests.[return][return]No other Japanese writer has seen as deeply into Mishima’s suicide and the “vacuum” of modern Japanese life as has the 1994 Nobel laureate in literature, Kenzaburo Oe:[return][return] “His death was a performance for the foreign audience, a very spect The Silent Cry. A Novel by Kenzaburo Oe[return][return]The Global Cry…., June 24, 2000[return][return]Let me discuss “The Silent Cry” and Oe’s work in general by first sketching in a broader view of Kenzaburo Oe’s literary interests.[return][return]No other Japanese writer has seen as deeply into Mishima’s suicide and the “vacuum” of modern Japanese life as has the 1994 Nobel laureate in literature, Kenzaburo Oe:[return][return] “His death was a performance for the foreign audience, a very spectacular performance. The relationship between Mishima and the emperor system was rather dubious; the Japanese knew that. But from foreigners’ point of view–say, an American reader’s point of view–the Japanese emperor system is something inexplicable. Therefore, that final act by Mishima, tied in with the emperor system, appeared to be a kind of mystical thing. In actuality, he did it in order to entertain foreign readers.”[return][return]As in this excerpt from a 1986 interview, Oe, also influenced early on by Marxism and existentialism, especially Sartre, has had the vision and strength to confront in his writing not only the nostalgia of Mishima but also the past and present implications of the emperor system for Japan. In 1971 his novella “The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears,” written just after Mishima’s suicide, courageously explores the nature and meaning of emperor worship. Having known Japanese students and friends who fiercely supported the emperor, loathed him, or were simply indifferent, with most falling into the last category, I believe it may be difficult for Americans to appreciate fully the scope of Oe’s achievement in this novella. Oe tried to convey the challenge of his theme when he wrote in an essay, “A man who criticises Mishima and his works must have the determination to criticise the total culture that orients itself toward the Imperial hierarchy.” Far from falling short of this determination, Oe creatively confronts the Japanese fascist and wartime past in “The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears” and thereby truly serves the Japanese people and, I would argue, the emperor as well.[return][return]Oe grew up in a small village on the island of Shikoku where the events of “The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears” and many of his stories take place. While in a Tokyo hospital dying of cancer, the persona narrates the densely complicated events of his father’s fervent devotion to the emperor, filtered through his own consciousness as a child and a mentally unbalanced adult recalling his “happy days.” His Japanese mother, who grew up in China, and whose own father was involved in the Daigaku Incident of 1910-11, an attempt to assassinate the emperor, believes her son has never been mentally stable since the age of three. Lying in his hospital bed, he recalls “hate-filled exchanges” between his mother and father about the role of his grandfather. Later in his life, she had always refused to discuss anything with her son about his father, a military official who returned from Manchuria a few years before the end of the war and who died attempting to lead an uprising in support of the emperor after his 1945 announcement of surrender on the radio. Respected by the village people, the father, suffering from cancer, secludes himself in the family storehouse. For the boy observing his father, he becomes a “kind of idol,” obedient to the emperor. After his older brother deserts in Manchuria, the boy shouts in defiance at his mother, “I don’t have no traitor’s blood in my veins”:[return][return] “Even now he could recall, with extreme vividness and reality . . . wanting to shout Long live the emperor! so that [his father] would acknowledge that it was his young son who was the true heir to his blood.”[return][return]Oe slowly leads the reader to the realization that the young boy has grown up to repeat the obsessions of the father, destroying himself in the process. When the mother, “a simple old country woman,” visits him as a thirty-five year old adult in the hospital, she struggles to no avail to get him to recognize what an absurd, cowardly figure his father actually was, while cancer literally and symbolically continues to eat him up. Near the end she says to the persona’s wife, whose own marriage and life have been ruined, “Sooner or later the Japanese are going to change their attitude about what happened, and I intend to live to see it, yessir! THIS IS THE DREAM. THIS MUST BE THE DREAM!” This is clearly the dream of Oe and many Japanese. He more than any other modern Japanese writer has had the courage to write fiction that might help Japan to accomplish it.[return][return]Also set mostly in Shikoku, The Silent Cry (1967), presents two brothers who return to their country village nestled in a valley. Although a dialectical struggle takes place between them, reminiscent of Dostoevski’s Brothers Karamazov, the older brother Mitsusaboro is the central figure of the novel, which is told from his point of view. In the opening paragraph, Mitsusaboro thinks to himself,[return][return] “Awakening in the predawn darkness, I grope among the anguished remnants of dreams that linger in my consciousness, in search of some ardent sense of expectation. Seeking in the tremulous hope of finding eager expectancy reviving in the innermost recesses of my being . . . still I find an endless nothing.”[return][return]He crawls into a hole dug for a septic tank and claws at the sides with his bare fingers trying to get the walls to cave in on himself. At the end of the summer his best friend, who had been injured in front of the Diet demonstrating against the Japan-US Mutual Security Treaty, had painted his head red, stuck a raw cucumber up the anus of his naked body, and hung himself. Mitsusaboro reflects, “And I too have the seeds of that same, incurable madness. . . .” Beginning in the hole, haunted by despair, madness, and nihilism, he gropes and searches throughout the novel for something worth living for. At dawn sticking his head up “two inches above the ground,” he notices,[return][return] “the backs of the dogwood leaves were a burning red… a red that reminded me of the flames in the picture of hell that I’d seen in our village temple every year on the Buddha’s Birthday. . . .”[return][return]Frederick Glaysher[return]http://www.fglaysher.com ...more

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Jan 04, 2021 Stuartandbooks rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Strange suicides, peasant uprisings, a hermit who lives in the woods, and the fattest woman in all of Japan. My first read of 2021 and my first book by Kenzaburo Oe. Taking place in 1960s Japan The Silent Cry is Oe's existentialist masterpiece with heavy themes of shame and guilt and how people respond to psychological trauma. The Silent Cry is one bleak, dark, and bizarre novel taking a look into the psyche of the human condition yet it is absolutely gripping and I couldn't put it down. Oe uses ...more

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Nov 08, 2020 Oskar Kvalsvik rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book is amazing. Has poignant social commentary and is written masterfully. I knew this book was going to be dark, but not this dark. woah this book hurt my soul.

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Aug 19, 2018 Kurt Chircop rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

If you are looking for a book that has incest, rape, suicides, murder, bad relationships and no time for humor with a lord of the flies vibe set in Japan, this book is for you.

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Jul 17, 2020 Iqra S. Cheema rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Surreal, beautiful, human, and political. It brings deeply personal and deeply political together in a heartbreaking way.

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Jul 31, 2020 Thomas rated it really liked it · review of another edition

this book is extremely good at making you feel depressed and anxious, even more so than A Personal Matter. like all Oe books the protagonist here has a mentally disabled child but in this one the mentally disabled child is more of a background detail to add to the general gloom rather than the main focus of the book. all in all its great fun for the whole family.

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Aug 14, 2019 Matt Simpson rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Whilst this books critically engages with many interesting topics - capitalism in postwar Japan, the concept of inherited guilt - I personally struggled to get through this book, resorting to reading small sections at a time. This is most likely because of a combination my own ignorance of rural Japanese lifestyle and the writing style (allegorical, quasi-magical realist at points) being difficult to translate from Japanese to English. I would recommend only if you have a more than passing inter ...more

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Aug 24, 2020 Omar Sabri rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

surreal and gives you a feeling of tranquility yet can be very disturbing

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About Kenzaburō Ōe

Kenzaburō Ōe

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Kenzaburō Ōe (大江健三郎), is a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, engage with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism.

Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condens ...more

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“The fear of blindness created a moment's vacuum, serving as a relaxant for my exhausted and overheated brain.” — 10 likes

“Now I was just a transient in the valley, a one-eyed passerby too fat for his years, and life there had the power to summon up neither the memory nor the illusion of any other, truer self. As a passerby I had a right to insist on my identity.” — 6 likes

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