Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells
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Returning to his longtime home in Japan after his father-in-law’s sudden death, Pico Iyer picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites: going to the post office and engaging in furious games of ping-pong every evening. But in a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, he comes to reflect on changelessness in ways that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and Iyer and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away. As the maple leaves begin to turn and the heat begins to soften, Iyer shows us a Japan we have seldom seen before, where the transparent and the mysterious are held in a delicate balance, and where autumn reminds us to take nothing for granted.
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I absolutely loved this book. And I think I read it at the right time (not to mention the right age), shortly after seeing Yasujirō Ozu's Tokyo Story.
He explicitly mentions this scene at the end of the film, which is one that I genuinely will never forget:
“Life is disappointing, isn't it?” says a young girl who's just lost her mother, near the movie's end. Her sister-in-law, only slightly older but a widow already, breaks into a radiant smile. “Yes,” she says, in the voice of classical Japan. “It is.”
If you're interested in Japan, and (ideally, like me) getting on a bit, I highly recommend this quite beautiful rumination on Japan, aging and death.
Halfway through the book, Iyer recounts his awe at hearing a friend's perceptions about Japan. “I'd never see that in a million years”, he confesses to his friend–who bemusedly reminds Iyer that those are Iyer's own words, from the book he wrote after first moving to Japan decades ago. That, to me, sums up the killer flaw in the book: Iyer can no longer recreate the Beginner's Mind necessary to connect with a reader.
His words are lovely. The mood of the book is lightly haunting, melancholy, appropriate for its subject matter: reflections on our middle age and mortality, particularly how we're affected by the deaths of those in our lives. But it's also much more, or seems to be, except I couldn't really grasp it: twenty years in Japan have changed Iyer's perspective, and his cultural references and assumptions make little sense to this western reader. Peoples' attitudes, their rituals, interests, I just couldn't grok.
There's one more thing that infused the book, and I'm not sure if it's deliberate or if Iyer is even aware of it: loneliness. I could not find any trace of human connection throughout the entire book: not in the shallow appearances-focused lives of those around him; not in his family or friends; not even in his perplexing relationship with his wife. There's no... heart? Two weeks after finishing, I'm still not sure what it was that I found missing. I just found it all so sad.
But then again maybe it's me and I'm just missing something important.
Visiting Japan in March and I couldn't be more excited. This was a lovely little read that left me thinking while reinforcing my excitement. Although now I sorta kinda wish I was visiting in Autumn...
