In Mistress Koharu, a Hungarian love doll comes to life, turning heads as she stalks the streets of Tokyo, while the man who bought her—Akira—strings along two other relationships in a spectacular feat of multitasking greed that benefits no one, least of all him. Written in Japanese by Noboru Tsujihara and translated by Kalau Almony, the novel, leaning bizarre and absurdist, is still an insightful meditation on lust, power, and greed.
Akira is an average, middle-aged publisher. His life is the easy and predictable routine of a salaryman, yet he finds himself in a mental slump, a state alleviated when he stumbles upon the address of Gallery Hitogata, a space showcasing the newest foreign-made love dolls in Japan. Unimpressed by the selection—“they all looked like characters from comics or anime and were made up like popular idols; they had felt quite distant from his own preferences”—he finally sees one he likes, a Hungarian love doll with “undeniably Asian” features: the titular Mistress Koharu. She brings peace and comfort to Akira, and under the heaviness of new love, he doesn’t notice her increasingly strange behaviour, and newfound, magical agency. One day, she moves on her own; another day, she speaks to him.
Meanwhile, other forces are at play. Unbeknownst to Akira, a woman across the building working as a subtitle translator watches him with a telescope, recording every move until she is well versed in his routine, all in preparation for the big day when she finally stages a meet-cute and begins a relationship with him.
Mistress Koharu, in its encyclopedic style and penchant for weirdness, is a thrilling read.
Though the novel establishes the relationship between Koharu and Akira as the focal point, it slowly shifts out of view in favour of two other women as the story progresses: a bar-owner Akira dates and the stalker-translator. By the novel’s mid-point, Koharu—who once seemed like the reason for the story—has almost vanished, relegated to the bed in Akira’s room; out of sight and out of mind for both the audience and Akira. If it sounds like there’s a lot going on, then know that the reading experience reflects this chaos, though the disjointed style is clearly intentional. Just as one character’s story begins to gain momentum, the novel shifts away, seemingly uninterested in the thrill of action or resolution, and instead dwells in the slow, deliberate build-up toward a payoff.
The narrative shifts and writing style are, by design, overwhelming. Films—both obscure and popular, Japanese and international—litter the narrative, as do novels, artworks, factoids, and historical digressions. In each instance, the novel lingers to build context; these are not throwaway references, but deliberate, richly-detailed moments. Yet the potential for awe, just in terms of the sheer research each page must hold, is slightly dimmed by the result, an overall choppiness that detracts from both the larger narrative and the value of each reference. Often, the segues—like a particularly long history lesson on ceramic pottery—drag on a beat (or two) too long.
More often than not, however, the contextual barrage enriches the characters. Mistress Koharu is not just a love doll; Mistress Koharu is Freud’s unheimlich (the uncanny), the one with a Northern Russian face and a tattered dress of Belarusian lace, a lace whose origins and history are laid out across pages. Another such instance is with the introduction of ETA Hoffmann’s “The Sandman”, a short story about a relationship with a beautiful automaton that ends in tragedy. Mentioned early enough in the story to set the groundworks of expectation, the pervasive sense of impending doom cuts through the novel, aided by atmospheric creepiness.
Mistress Koharu, in its encyclopedic style and penchant for weirdness, is a thrilling read, even when the thrill is the reward for pages of textbook-style tangential information. As translator Almony rightly notes,
it is the book’s obsessive citation that links everything together. All the references trace out the characters and the world they live in, both physical and cultural.
It is, by construction, a book meant to be read again and again, with the reader finding new links and rabbit holes with each read. And in this goal, it exceeds expectations.