Take a journey through the mythic and mundane in 'The Thorn Puller'

Hiromi Ito’s “The Thorn Puller” tugs the reader in two directions at once. First, into the guts and gore of ordinary human struggle: the pains of growing older, fraught relationships with loved ones and struggles to juggle a career and childrearing. Then, into the realm of the cosmic: broken curses, received blessings and the legends of spirits and the book’s namesake, Togenuki Jizo, the “thorn-pulling bodhisattva.”

In this way, Ito folds in the mythic with the mundane to connect the everyday types of suffering with the most divine kind of metamorphosis. This shapeshifting work flexes innovative literary devices while maintaining a Joycean directness in its approach to the crude banalities of life.

Ito and translator Jeffrey Angles have achieved something special with the author’s first novel to be translated into English: a novel that has the power to teach readers about life without offering explicit words of advice. Though “The Thorn Puller” is a simple tale about a woman’s challenges as she looks after her aging parents in Kumamoto and her husband and children in California, it offers genuine insight into what it means to be a parent, child, lover and friend.

It’s surprising that it has taken this long for a translation of Ito’s novels to be published. A prominent poet, novelist and essayist in Japan, she first made waves in the literary scene when she won the Gendai Shitecho magazine's award for emerging writers in 1978. Since then, her books and collections have explored a wide range of topics including sexuality, motherhood, the female body and mythology. Her most well-known book in Japan is perhaps "Ii Oppai, Warui Oppai" ("Good Breast, Bad Breast"), a book of humorous childrearing advice for new mothers.

“The Thorn Puller” is a semi-autobiographical story of Ito’s own passage back and forth between Japan and the United States as she shoulders an impressive load of family troubles. Her parents are slowly deteriorating as they suffer through an endless series of illnesses. She can’t stop clashing with her older British husband, who has no shortage of his own health issues, largely due to the vast cultural chasm between them. Then there are her children, one of whom is still young and unsure of her bicultural identity, and another who is a college student wrestling with a fierce bout of depression and an eating disorder. Even Ito’s loveable pets have their own troubles. The basic structure is a first-person account of the author’s battle against these familial struggles while also pursuing a life as a traveler and poet, all while trying to understand the meaning of her own suffering.

It’s almost a miracle that the novel feels straightforward at times. Ito’s approach to prose is anything but simple: She freely fuses poetic verse into her descriptions and incorporates the voices of Japanese poets and authors from Sei Shonagon to Kenji Miyazawa and Osamu Dazai to create a “generic chimera,” as described by Angles in his introduction. The musical, playful language makes the story not only a joy to read but adds dense layers of spiritual, historical and literary depth to one woman’s tale.

From a literary perspective, Ito’s writing achieves one-of-a-kind moments throughout the book. For example, she creates metaphors related to food, describing her mother’s decrepit body as “a hand that had neither the shape nor color of a hand. Like dim sum chicken feet.” She depicts landscapes with emotional and erotic energy: “Somehow, the air is ever so slightly blue, as delicately pale as the root of a young spring onion.” Angles does an outstanding job recreating Ito’s variety of inventive styles and approaches to language in fluid English.

From a human perspective, the novel’s direct confrontation with the hardships of life makes for a compelling story. Ito’s experiences shed light on the difficulties of cross-cultural marriages and immigration, the role of religion and spirituality in modern life, how to be present for your children and friends, and how to try to limit your suffering in a world where suffering seems to have no restraint. Several of the chapters moved me to tears, especially “Ito Goes on A Journey,” where Ito reconnects with Japanese poetry and prays that her friend will be spared from cancer, and “The Rainy Season Continues,” where she confronts the worst of her mother’s illness.

Thematically, “The Thorn Puller” is a kind of classic humanist novel where genuine connection with the natural world and Ito’s deeper identity offers solace in the face of suffering. The journey the author takes to arrive at that point, however, is nothing short of astounding. “The Thorn Puller” should go down not just as one of the best Japanese novels in translation of this year, but of recent years; in my opinion, it is the best work of Japanese fiction to appear in English since Haruki Murakami’s 2005 novel “Kafka on the Shore.”

There may be no end to Ito’s suffering, but a novel like this one shines beauty into life like shafts of light through storm clouds. As Ito’s father says from deep within the mists his dementia, his infirmity, his loneliness: “I know that smoking won’t change anything,/ But if I light up a cigarette, smoke will come out,/ Maybe just watching the smoke rise will improve things somehow.”