Sacred Cesium Ground
Isa's Deluge
Afterword
Kimura Yusuke was born in 1970 in Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture. He
is the author of several acclaimed works, many of which are set in
this region. These are the first of his works to be translated into
English.
Doug Slaymaker is a professor of Japanese at the University of
Kentucky. He is the translator, with Akiko Takenaka, of Hideo
Furukawa's Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure
(Columbia, 2016).
Sacred Cesium Ground and Isa's Deluge is a potent
representation of stubborn locals and places that refuse to be
forgotten, clinging to integrity and humanity in the face of
disaster and apathy. Defiant and awake, Kimura's work speaks softly
and carries a wallop. * Foreword Reviews (starred review) *
Two haunting novellas that are slight in length yet dense with
meaning, enhancing the growing genre of post-3/11 literature in
response to the catastrophic March 11, 2011, Tohoku earthquake,
tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear meltdown. . . . Kimura's novellas
offer a piercing portrait of the abandoned and forgotten. *
Booklist *
Both novellas highlight peripheral voices in the post-3/11 period
and ultimately return time and again to that tension between a
"sacrificial" Tohoku and an all-powerful capital. These
perspectives are those not frequently heard and challenge the
widespread narrative of an ever-dominant Tokyo. * Japan Times *
Kimura Yusuke's novels are expanding the frontiers of
Japanese-language literature. Literature consists of giving voice
to the speechless, so novels at the frontiers often take on strange
shapes. Kimura Yusuke is attentive to and gives shape to vital
voices of the people and animals of northeastern Japan that few
have been able to hear. His vision goes far beyond Tohoku; it
captures the future of the planet. -- Hoshino Tomoyuki, author of
We, the Children of Cats, winner of the Tanizaki Jun'ichiro
Prize
Animals are speechless. In Sacred Cesium Ground, Kimura
speaks up for them. The residents of Japan's disaster-ravaged
northeastern region are voiceless. He gives them voice in Isa's
Deluge. In a spirit of solidarity with the silenced and
marginalized, he reexamines the logic behind Japan's modernity. The
result is this volume: outrageously honest and powerfully haunting.
-- Suga Keijiro, author of Transversal Journeys, winner of
the Yomiuri Prize for Literature
Kimura pulls the reader into the irradiated zone where residents
struggle for justice against a government that treats them as
disposable as the cattle they illegally tend. Sacred Cesium
Ground asks tough questions: What will happen to Japan's
irradiated areas? Who is responsible for this nuclear tragedy?
Slaymaker's translation brings this important novel into dialogue
with nuclear fiction worldwide. -- Rachel DiNitto, University of
Oregon
Isa's Deluge is at once a story of the triple disaster in
northeastern Japan and of one man's search for his roots. Kimura's
themes of destruction and ancestry culminate in an unforgettable,
searing attack by the long marginalized against the powers that be.
-- Davinder Bhowmik, University of Washington
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