Where Europe Begins by Yoko Tawada

Another Yoko Tawada that I read four months prior while in Germany.

This collection of short stories was written in German originally, I found her writing to be shocking in the best way possible. Never have I read anything like this sentence from her short story "Spores": "Every morning at six, Kinoko-san arranges the neckline of her kimono just so, draws herself up straight and smiles with her shiny cheeks and kindly-looking crow's feet." Kindly-looking crow's feet?

I will mostly take the examples from her ahort story, "The Bath" for the following.

Tawada, as a transnational subject, is attentive to the constantly shifting nature of subjectivity: "Eighty pervent of the human body is made of water, so it isn't surprising that one sees a different face in the mirror each morning."

She surgically removes the artificial boundaries between East and West, the Japanese narrator in the Bath becomes the double of a middle-aged dead German lady in the middle of the book. The short story "When Europe Begins" is also an excellent case in point: where does Europe begin? the narrator wonders as she goes from Japan to Europe on the transsiberian railway.

In the place of the regional and national (or other territory-bounded) myths, Tawada uses her own myths, or uses stories from all different cultures to create a potent hodgepodge that disturbs boundaries. (These are present in several of her stories in this collection, I will not copy an example.)

As a polyglot and writer in two languages, Tawada is very aware of the tactility of words. The protagonist in "The Bath" is a translator who translates for a German and Japanese business group, which she likens as the following: "People's mouths fell open like trash bags, and garbage spilled out. I had to chew the garbage, swallow it, and spit it back out in different words."

I really liked this collection (I was not a big fan of Facing the Bridge) and I wanted to write a longer review, but four months have passed and I don't want to reread the whole thing. Sad.

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