Flowers of Grass

Takehiro Fukunaga’s 1954 novel Flowers of Grass is considered to be a classic of postwar Japanese fiction, and it’s the sort of book that I imagine many people envision when they think of “literature.” The main narrator is Shiomi, an intelligent but sad young man who’s deeply concerned with spiritual and philosophical matters. As the novel opens, Shiomi has opted to undergo a risky operation at a tuberculosis care facility. Knowing that he won’t survive, he leaves a handwritten account of his life before the war, when he loved and lost both a male classmate and that classmate’s sister.

If one reads Flowers of Grass “straight,” Shiomi is a passionate but pure-hearted young man who has a tendency to fall in love with the idealistic versions of people he creates in his head instead of the actual people themselves. If you’re me, however, it feels much more natural to read Shiomi as a closeted gay man who has an intense sexual crush on a fellow member of his high school archery club but feels obligated to transfer his affection to the boy’s sister once he enters college. Despite being a devout Christian, the sister loves the apostatic Shiomi and twice attempts to initiate a sexual relationship, but Shiomi finds himself unable to reciprocate her physical attraction.

Perhaps this is just my own personal bias, but I also picked up an element of homosexual attraction between Shiomi and the narrator of the novel’s frame story, a fellow patient at the tuberculosis sanitarium. In my reading of Flowers of Grass, the burgeoning romantic relationship between Shiomi and the frame narrator goes a long way toward answering the novel’s opening question: Why does Shiomi decide to undergo a dangerous operation that’s almost certain to be fatal? Essentially, Shiomi has decided to commit suicide, and the point of the testament he leaves behind is to explain why. The answer is complicated, but I get the feeling that Shiomi’s inability to come to terms with his queer sexuality is not inconsequential.  

Putting the matter of sexuality aside, the bulk of Flowers of Grass is set during the late 1930s and early 1940s, and the story is of historical interest for its clear and unapologetic stance against the aggression of the Japanese imperial state. Shiomi is eventually drafted, and I think the author intends him to serve as a representative symbol of a typical Japanese soldier in that he really, really wasn’t cut out for the army. No sane military organization would want someone like Shiomi to be a soldier, but the Japanese Imperial Army was not sane.

The two love stories at the core of Flowers of Grass are intriguing, as is the mystery posed in its opening section. Unfortunately, the beginning of the novel is somewhat dull and meandering, and it takes an inordinately long time for the story to find its feet. In particular, your mileage may vary regarding how many dozens of pages of teenagers discussing philosophy you’re willing to wade through. Flowers of Grass requires patience, but it rewards thought and reflection.

As an aside, this novel was translated by Royall Tyler, who is famous for his translation of The Tale of Genji. I was curious about what Royall Tyler is up to these days, and I was amazed and delighted to find that he’s retired from academia to manage a llama farm. I highly recommend checking out his website (here), which is the most charming and wholesome thing I’ve encountered on the internet in a long time.