Book Review: Yuko Tsushima, now in English translation, explores nuclear, and personal, nightmares

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Japan’s three historic nuclear events — the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing days of World War II and the 2011 nuclear plant meltdowns in Fukushima — form a key backdrop for “Wildcat Dome,” a novel by Yuko Tsushima.

Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda’s English translation of the book by the Kawabata and Tanizaki awards-winning writer is now out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, going on sale this month.

As fitting of a catastrophic theme, the writing rambles, although intentionally and in a delightfully mesmerizing style, meandering from a description of a scene to a dialogue, only to be interrupted by a sound, an image or an action, like memories of a dream, or a nightmare.

Among the main characters are children born to Japanese women and American servicemen, who grow up in an orphanage. They embody the human costs of war, and the suffering of living in a discriminatory society.

The layering of the subplots involving radiation and racism, as well as personal conflict, leads always to the big question: Why?

The author never gives us a real answer or pretends to try.

The book has references to sweeping social themes like Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X, and the Vietnam War, as well as the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. And they are juxtaposed with personal catastrophe.

The characters live through the Fukushima disaster, the fear of radiation, witnessing crowds of people wearing masks, then forgetting to wear them, followed again by more fear. In another segment, a mother is taking care of a son who has “turned into a cold stone,” haunted by a child’s drowning.

“The mother sighs and opens the door. The floorboards squeak like a cat’s helpless meow, drawing her inside,” a passage reads.

“Raindrops, glimmering white, slide off each leaf, the sound of the drip, drip striking his eardrums like a song, a quietness that could only be called a raindrop song, a cheerful song,” goes another passage typical of Tsushima’s language.

Traveling across time, back and forth, as well as geographically, to Europe at one point, as well as Japan and the U.S., the storytelling may be easily called a bit chaotic. But one wouldn’t expect a nuclear disaster, war or murder to be too orderly.

In the hands of Tsushima, the daughter of famed novelist Osamu Dazai, who wrote “No Longer Human,” it’s strangely riveting. “Wildcat Dome” is Tsushima's final work. She died in 2016.

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