We know a hero when we see one: He (of course) will be the one who doesn’t need a map or app to know the way, who’s barreling ahead of the pack into the unknown, unburdened by rules or mores.
This hero may well flourish out in the Wild West, but the Japanese office is an altogether different jungle. In “Bari Sanko,” one of three novels awarded the Akutagawa literary prize this year, Sanzo K. Matsunaga uses plainly written prose to traverse the implications of independence while slyly probing at modern masculinity. (At time of writing, there has been no announcement regarding an English translation.)
The novel introduces two worldviews in the form of narrator Hata and his co-worker Mega. Hata is married with one child and has been working for two years at a building exterior repair company in Kobe. To show a more active presence with his co-workers, he joins the office hiking club, which meets in and around the Rokko mountains. But Hata soon becomes fixated on the rogue company veteran Mega, a 40-something practitioner of “bari sankō,” or “variation hiking,” bushwhacking and off-path climbing on mountains.
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