猫はいつでも甘やかされる

by 榎田尤利, 紺野 けい子 (イラスト)

根津にある高校で特別講師として生徒達に英会話を教えることになったシュウはそこで流しの着物を着た茶道の特別講師・春彦と出会う。初対面の時から春彦に居心地の悪さを感じつつも、とあることがきっかけで、シュウは春彦が住む放蕩長屋で一緒に暮らすことに…。

236 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2003

About the author

Yuuri Eda is a Japanese Light Novel writer.
The genre of her works is Boys Love (BL).
Her debut novel is「夏の塩」(2000).
Yuuri Eda was one of the disciples of Azusa Nakajima ( 中島 梓, pen name of Kaoru Kurimoto / 栗本 薫.
She uses the pen name 榎田ユウリ for her general audience (not BL) works.
※Her two names in Romanization are the same.

榎田 尤利（えだ ゆうり）は、日本のボーイズラブ小説家。
7月16日生まれ、蟹座、O型。
2000年「夏の塩」（成美堂出版 クリスタル文庫）にてデビュー。同作品は、1996年『小説JUNE』77号に掲載。
『小説JUNE』にて連載されていた投稿作批評コラム「中島 梓 (栗本薫の別名義)の小説道場」の門下生。文章力に定評があり、物語性のある作品が多い。シリアスからコメディまで、作風は多様性に富む。
BL以外のライトノベル作品は、〝榎田 ユウリ〟で執筆している。

Reviews

[Commie Simpson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty decent portrayal of mixed kids raised outside of Japan and their racial experiences. The book keeps it light, but substantial enough to let you catch a glimpse of how it feels like to grow up without feeling like you really belong; how painful it is to be subjected to racial fetishization; how the fear of being objectified and seen as parts but never whole haunts your every interactions with the outside world; how racism is internalized; and how insecure mixed individuals can be victims and perpetrators of racism at the same time.

Eda Yuuri wrote this story with compassion and a heartfelt belief in the power of love and sincerity, that racism on an individual level can be dispelled with human warmth and meaningful connections. It’s a hopeful message that I really appreciate, and I do think the execution of this message in this book is not bad at all. And yet I cannot help but feel like, if it were me? In real life? I wouldn’t want nothing, zero, nada, to do with these white supremacist mixed folks and closeted racist whites at all. Once I know you talk shits behind my back about my people or any minority groups for that matter, our friendship is done, I’m cutting you out of my life 🤷‍♀️ Maybe it’s because I lack compassion like this that I admire folks who have the patience to try to change racist minds…

[Chocobox · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is actually a sequel, but as the conflict in the first book is that the main character's boyfriend cheats on him all the time, I'm not really interested in reading it. (I would kind of like to read more about Haru, but...knowing he's just going to spend the whole book in love with his dumb friend doesn't appeal to me either.) At any rate, The main characters of this book are Shuu, a half-American, half-Japanese grad student temporarily teaching English in Japan, and Haruhiko, who's teaching tea ceremony at the same school. (We will ignore Shuu's mysterious genes that give him blond hair and blue eyes. I had brief hopes when Haru pointed out that these are recessive traits, but the explanation was that it was rare, but "my grandmother's hair was this color." Oooookay.) Shuu starts out as kind of a jerk who hates Japan, but he grows up and gets better during the course of the book. I like that the book doesn't follow the BL convention that the characters can't get together until the end of the book...they actually get together in the middle, and the rest of the book mostly deals with other problems. I mean, there are some relationship problems, too, but the book is so short they don't drag on and on like they sometimes do. Also, bonus, the English doesn't totally suck. It's obvious it was written by a Japanese person, but it's not wrong exactly. (And I would like to print out the part about how desire to communicate is more important than grammatical correctness and give it to every Japanese person studying English.)