‘Tsukiko, do you know what that means, a “karmic connection”?’ Sensei asked in return. Something to do with chance? I ventured, after thinking for a moment. Sensei shook his head with a furrowed brow. ‘Not chance, but rather, destiny. Transmigration of the soul.’ [loc. 895]
Tsukiko is in her late thirties: she has a career, though we're never given any details about it, and lives alone. She likes to drink alone, too: one night, in her local bar, she encounters one of her teachers from high school. Forgetting his name, she refers to him as 'Sensei',
Slowly and without fanfare, the two become friends. They eat and drink together (there is a lot of eating in this novel, and it made me crave good Japanese food) and discuss their individual eccentricities. Sensei had a wife, but she left him: Tsukiko doesn't seem particularly interested in romantic or sexual relationships. Sensei likes to collect railway teapots: Tsukiko has an irrational loathing of a particular baseball team. Despite the difference in their age, despite the imbalance of their relationship, they are comfortable together. Tsukiko finally identifies the emotion she feels for Sensei as love, but seems content for that love to be platonic. She reflects that she's never really grown up: perhaps it's the love of a student for a teacher.
Strange Weather in Tokyo is a very slow novel. Objectively, nothing much happens. There is, though, a sense of hidden depth, and perhaps of changes occurring which Tsukiko cannot perceive. I found the relationship between the two protagonists somewhat unsettling, mostly because of the age gap and the sense that Sensei holds all the power. Because we seldom get any insight into Sensei's true thoughts and emotions, it was all too easy to overthink some of his apparently-random observations: about karma, about souls, about emotion affecting the weather.
The translation flowed smoothly, though I was confused by the way that some lines of dialogue were within quotation marks and others weren't. The final chapter was jarring: it seemed considerably weirder and more fantastical than the rest of the novel. Eventually I realised (from the copyright notices) that it was a wholly separate short story, 'Parade'. This could have been made clearer in the body of the text.
Overall, a gentle and often poetic novel that didn't quite work for me.
Read for the 'Translated from an Asian language' rubric of the Reading Women 2020 challenge.
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