The Fox and Dr. Shimamura
Good Fit
- Readers who prefer irony, humour and an odd atmosphere over strict fact in a historical novel
- Anyone curious about the history of psychiatry and neurology and how hysteria became a «show» in the 19th century
- Fans of a short novel in which memory, illness and family care are written in a dark but subtle humour
Not a Fit
- Readers who want a straight, fast plot: the novel jumps between time layers and keeps the truth deliberately blurred
- Anyone expecting the real Shimamura Shunichi's historical biography: the book is a work of fiction based on a real person, not a biography
- Readers sensitive to depictions of the female body and hysteria demonstrations: a few scenes include partial nudity and sexually coloured descriptions
The book opens with three epigraphs: the description in the 1892 «Le Temps» of a «young Japanese» brought to Charcot's demonstration in the Salpêtrière amphitheatre, the sentence in Yasuo Okada's 1992 article «What was Shimamura's illness? I searched but found no answer», and Breton's lines on hysteria. This short opening fixes the tone of the novel: a biography of a real historical person but fictional, ironic and fragmentary.
The main story begins in February 1922 in the house at Kameoka. Shimamura Shunichi, retired professor of neurology at the Kyoto Medical School, has tuberculosis (or something else with no name), his temperature rises and his thoughts tangle. For years he has been thinking about a great work on memory he calls the «Or-Project», which has never been written. As a hospital director he is best remembered for the thick mattresses he had put on the walls; now with the same mattresses he has had two walls built in his own room to separate his family from himself.
Four women wait on him: his wife Sachiko, his mother Hanako, his mother-in-law Yukiko and a maid he brought from the hospital, whose name is Anna or Luise. The voices of Hanako and Yukiko have become so alike that Shimamura cannot tell who is whispering; Sachiko is a «prismatic, crystallised» shadow. A scopolamine injection sends him to sleep and returns him to seven years old; he remembers his father's calligraphy and his mother cleaning his ears. In these episodes the humour is dry, but the author does not mock the hero; she brings out the loneliness of the sick old man.
The flashback goes to 1891, to young Shimamura being sent to Shimane Prefecture: Professor Sakaki tells him to study the «fox possession» epidemic and a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old talkative student helps him. The journey goes on two weeks on foot, in palanquins and by rickshaw; but no neurological sign and no firm diagnosis are found, only tuberculosis, influenza and other ailments. The hero's idea of writing «fox» for the patients and sending them away reveals the meaning of the professor's joke. The author describes in detail and with disgust the selling of people called «kap» as fox shelters.
The style is dry, ironic and rich in memory games: in old age Shimamura thinks in German, and mixes up the student whose name he cannot remember, Japanese words and European memories. The notes explain folkloric concepts (kitsunetsuki). The weakness is that events leap often between layers of time and nothing is explained to the reader; those seeking light reading may tire.
- The tone is dry and ironic: the hero's precision as a neurologist clashes repeatedly with ridiculous situations
- Three layers of time (1891, 1892–1894, 1922–1923) arrive in fragments; the deceptiveness of memory works as form too
- Epigraphs and notes (Le Temps, Okada, Breton, Griesinger) mix fiction and real history and set an ironic distance from the subject
- The language is light, measured and written in short sentences; exaggeration and parody (kap, fox spirit, the Or-Project) hide deep feelings
Another novel by the same writer that turns a historical figure into fiction
A humorous Japanese classic that mocks its own narrator
A historical book that looks at hysteria demonstrations in the time of the Salpêtrière and Charcot
Shimamura wanders for two weeks in the hellish heat of Shimane, sees fox «signs» everywhere, but finds no neurological sign in any woman. After four tuberculoses, one meningitis, three simple influenzas and various paralyses, he takes pity on himself and for no reason diagnoses one person with «St Vitus's dance» and another with «pregnancy psychosis». The student embraces the patients and spits on their hands, and Shimamura does not want to ask what it means.
In 1922, after the scopolamine, he falls asleep and repeats a word — «Fuchsgeist» («fox spirit»), saying it with a Viennese accent. This word is the beginning of both the theme of fox possession and of memory.
If you see a problem, write to us. Publisher, author, rights holder, or just a reader — it doesn't matter. If there's something problematic about copyright in this review, if the review's author has broken the site's rules, or if you simply have a suggestion or complaint, hey@kitabdanevar.com. We'd rather resolve this between ourselves than go to court: we review requests within 48 hours and, if needed, correct or fully remove the review.
