This is a gem of a book and an absolute delight to read.
Atsuhiro Yoshida is an award-winning Japanese book designer who has over 40 books to his credit.
Goodnight Tokyo is the first novel of his to be published in English, although other books have been translated into French, German and Italian. This edition has been translated by Hadyn Trowell.
Described as an ‘outlandishly bizarre novelist’, it was quite difficult to find any information about him other than he was born in Tokyo in 1962 and runs a creative agency with his wife Hiromi.
Goodnight Tokyo is a collection of inter-linked stories, all set in modern-day Tokyo and all taking place at around 1am. The night world of Tokyo makes for a fascinating backdrop. All the quirky characters are going about their quite unusual lives while the majority of people are asleep.
We meet Matsui, a taxi driver who works the evening to morning shift. Mitsuki is a prop procurer for a movie company and her job is to find obscure objects. Shuro is an actor playing a famous detective who is also searching for memories of his late father. There is an all-night diner, named Yotsukado, which means, aptly, Crossroads in Japanese. It caters to all the nocturnal customers. It is also a conduit to some of the interlinking stories.
There is a back story for each character, and all are described with precision. Each one of them appears to be searching for something that is missing: an object, a person, a hope or aspiration. It’s all woven together brilliantly, with the kind of polite, neat and delicate attention to detail that is part of the Japanese style.
This is the kind of book that you can easily consume in one sitting and will no doubt return to again.
I hope more of Yoshida’s novels will be translated into to English for us to enjoy.
Europa Editions