City of Refuge by Kenzo Kitakata

The perils of waiting so long for a book to finally come out are that you might raise your expectations too high. This happened with Kenzo Kitakata’s City of Refuge. I was waiting for it for years. Each time the publication date neared, it was pushed back a few months. This went on and on. My mother-in-law ordered it for me and it sat on her queue for years until she dropped it. I gave up on it and then it appeared just around Christmas last year. So, I finally got my hands on it as a gift from my wife’s parents and I started reading it in February.

There wasn’t much of a plot and none of the characters were really developed outside of a simplistic 2-D frame. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as Kitakata has a way of painting a scene and drawing one into it to contemplate it from inside the mind of the main character. I think this was what I loved about his novel Winter Sleep, but now I wonder if I should reread it to see if I’m missing something. But as for CIty of Refuge, I could never relate to any of the characters or feel for them. It felt a little like watching an episode of Peter Gunn from the 1950s and 60s. It had an aura but little plot and little character outside of what the generic genre provided.

I’m glad I read the book and glad that I had the opportunity to read all of his works that have been translated into English. I will hesitate before buying another of his novels but I will someday go back to Winter Sleep and maybe Ashes to see if City of Refuge was an aberration. I was so caught up in Japanese noir after reading Natsuo Kirino’s Out. I wonder if that book, which had a strong identity and feminist streak to it, got me excited to read anything I could in that area and I might not have had such a critical eye at first. No matter, I read City of Refuge and did not put it aside, so it was good enough to demand I finish it.