There are incidents but very little plot. There are few characters and even the young mother at the centre of the narrative remains relatively opaque. There are odd illuminated moments, but it’s quite a challenging read in places. And yet this is an atmospheric and haunting novel, unusual, insightful and ultimately very much worth the effort.

An intensely moving journey following one woman starting a new life after a divorce from her husband. The story continues as she faces a dark and lonely path to a new life. In Japan divorce is frowned upon, so her journey is very stark void of any comforts.

I could not read the whole book due to technical problems with the Kindle file. All too often there were missing letters which disrupted severely my reading experience. The premise and style of writing seem interesting but unfortunately I cannot provide a reliable recommendation.

This is an intense read following one woman in Japan as she separates from her husband - not entirely willingly. Living in a small apartment with her daughter she flows through both mania and depression functioning in some ways on only the basic levels. The reader becomes immersed in the characterisation of a novel with few characters to begin with. I think it says something of the cultural beliefs in Japan where everyone seems to believe divorce will only start Mrs Fujino on a slipper descent in terms of status and value. My greets problem is that it fails to pull everything together - the end left me disatisfied

Surprisingly light simple prose portrays the changes in the life of the young woman at the heart of this novel. Plotted over the course of a year (and indeed originally published in 12 monthly instalments) we see her life change, not in a dramatic or shocking way but in a way that is common to everyone’s experience: one thing changes – in this case a breakdown in her relationship with her partner – and this impacts on many other aspects of life that after a period of time has elapsed results in a different process for living. It is not dramatic, it is real - this is her life but it is our life too.

This is a remarkable book written about an unremarkable story which has been translated in a subtle and understanding way. Translated books can often feel jarring at times but this perfect translation allows the poetry of the original language to shine through, reflecting the light which is a recurring motif throughout the book and allowing the beautiful simple prose to suggest a stability not offered in the protagonist’s life over the period of the novel.

Having not read much Japanese fiction I was immediately struck by the similarities with Yukio Mishima (maybe not surprising) and to a certain extent Colm Tóibín for the same reasons - lyrical and vivid writing describing the minutiae and very ordinary details of everyday life. But that is a strength of these novelists, laying out our own life before us through someone else’s story. We all don’t have lives filled with wonder, terror and exhilaration as many modern authors would like us to believe and Tsushima’s prose has the feeling of truth and ordinariness about it; it is real and is no less beautiful for that. What a pleasure to be introduced to this book and to read it forty years after its original publication.

Don’t come to this title expecting a fast-paced storyline. Indeed, you may be disappointed if you expect a plot! However, this is a book to savour for both the language and the tone and what it reflects of our own humanity. This will leave an undeniable mark on me for much time to come.

Copy provided by Netgalley.

Territory of Light is undeniably poetic, however I found the starkness and bareness uncomfortable. The narrator who is unnamed has moved into a new apartment with her toddler daughter, as her husband has left her. The apartment is filled with light and the woman in comparison, is filled with darkness as she navigates this new chapter in her life. Whilst Territory of light is hauntingly honest, and emotionally brutal, I felt largely unsatisfied by the ending and felt that the novel deserved more.

A wonderful description of finding one's feet and starting a new life, with realistic and raw interactions, flawed characters and a beautiful meditation about the power of memory and light. Poignant vignettes of life which feels timeless, although it is clearly a product of its time and place.

I could not get into this story at all. It was interesting to read about how women were treated in 1970s Japan.

[was unable to finish due the book due to technical difficulties with kindle file] - Rating based on first couple of chapters.

Delicate, bleak and disturbing

Though it could be said this is a ‘slight’ book, it is not without its own uncomfortable power. I found myself thinking of The Bell Jar, at times, transported to a different culture (Japan) where not so much is stated or shown, and the narrator’s emotional and existential fractures have a kind of varnished, disguised quality to them, even from within her own expression

Set in Tokyo in the 70s the slim book charts a year in the life of a woman who has rented a fourth floor apartment, the ‘territory of light’ in a mainly abandoned commercial property

The unnamed narrator is a young woman with a toddler, separated from her wastrel husband. The only name we have for her is her last name, her married name, coincidentally the same surname as the building’s landlord. It is totally fitting that we do not know her name – she is a demographic – young woman, separated, single mother, struggling to keep finances together, juggling the requirements of work and childcare. She is isolated and the separation from her unsuitable partner (her mother advised against the marriage) is something shameful. She is outside society.

This is a deeply melancholic book, with a strange, dissociative, dream like quality. The rhythms of the writing are somehow both spare, slow and clear. Reading, in my head I could hear the evocative, misty soundscape evoked by the shakuhachi flute, and see in my mind’s eye some typical Japanese calligraphy and artwork featuring a mountain and a crane – a kind of still, sad beauty constructed over sadness.

I wanted to read and surrender to the ‘nothing happens, everything happens’ sensibility of this – little high drama, much recounting of everyday, but in a way which set down roots into depths, shoots into light – but it took me far longer to read than its short length should have taken. And this was because the atmosphere was pervasive, misty, and the spare writing invited the reader to stop, reflect, let the images build

“To the west, at the far end of the long, thin apartment, a big window gave onto the main road; here the late sun and the street noise poured in without mercy. Directly below, one could see the black heads of pedestrians who streamed along the pavement towards the station in the morning and back again in the evening. On the footpath opposite, in front of a florist’s, people stood still at a bus stop. Every time a bus or lorry passed by the whole fourth floor shook and the crockery rattles on the shelves. The building where I’d set up house with my daughter was on a three-way intersection – four-way counting the lane to the south. Nevertheless, several times a day, a certain combination of red lights and traffic flow would produce about ten seconds silence. I always noticed it a split second before the signals changed and the waiting cars all revved impatiently at once”

Geraldine Harcourt is the translator of this strange, subtly unsettling novella, originally published in a Japanese monthly literary magazine, in the late 70s. I have never read any of Yuko Tsushima’s work before, or, indeed heard of her. Something I intend to rectify - there are a couple of other titles, either pending publication or already published by Penguin Modern Classics. I have fallen under this writer’s spell

I was lucky enough to receive this as an ARC via NetGalley. Amusingly, though the published Kindle seems properly formatted, the ARC had some curious errors – any words containing any of the following letter combinations, had those letters missing, which added to the strange, elusive, not quite graspable spell of the piece – ff, fl, fi – so office floor became o ice oor. At times it was like trying to piece together a fine cracked piece of porcelain!

This is a haunting read. It pulls you in and soon you find yourself drowning, gasping for air, reaching towards the light. The single mother of a two-year-old girl opens up to you, tells you all as it is, step after painful step of the way. After separating from her husband, she finds refuge in a light-flooded four-floor apartment where she tries to rebuild her life. It is a fine balancing act between sanity and depression, survival and surrender. She is a tightrope walker and she wobbles and falls down many times. She resorts to drinking which doesn’t do much for her balancing skills. She is vulnerable, incompetent, often late, sometimes short-tempered. As a woman, you can see yourself in her – all those times in your life when you thought you wouldn’t be able to make it through the day. That is what makes it a haunting read. It hits home. It gets under your skin. It could be you.
The dazzling bright light dancing in her flat is symbolic of life. The empty flat on the third floor symbolises new doors, new beginnings opening before her as the story draws to its end. So at last, you can breathe.
I give it 5 stars not because I loved it, but because it was so powerful, so close to the nerve and so painfully honest. Reading it was a vicarious experience I am so glad I only brushed by in passing. But it stays with you and you can’t ignore it.

Set in Tokyo, Territory of Light chronicles the life of a young woman who is left by her husband to bring up her two-year-old daughter on her own. The story is told in a no-nonsense style like a journal, reporting the facts of her days fraught with the stress of keeping her child well cared for and socially on track, while trying to earn a living to keep them both.
What emerges from the terse narrative is a real immersion into this unnamed woman’s world and a very accurate portray of what it is like for a single mother with an errant father to meet the expectations of society in bringing up a child. This seems to be the same the world over.
There is little direct description of the woman’s emotional inner landscape and yet the choice of words in the narrative really makes you, the reader, feel you are the woman in experiencing everything she does.
Her life is full of frustration and minor injustices, as well as the constant pressure exerted on her by a child who is not particularly naughty, but trying to make sense of their fractured family life in her own way. The actions and dialogue between mother and child, are particularly poignant and really demonstrate how well clean prose can be put to use to involve a reader emotionally in a scene.
This is the story of someone who has little time to snatch moments for herself to contemplate and appreciate the finer details of the world around her. Yet when she does it is with great concentration, capturing the minutiae of everything that might enrich her life.
Geraldine Harcourt has done a great job translating Yuko Tsushima’s terse prose, making the book is a very useful resource for a writer wanting to understand how to convey a character’s inner, emotional landscape, as well as developing a highly effective writing style through the careful choice of words and direct prose.

I liked this book. Essentially a collection of 'episodes' from the central character's life after separating, with her young child, from her husband and moving to a new flat. Each captures a particular moment, feeling or experience. Told with compelling honesty and revealing accuracy these tales are both beautiful and haunting. The 'mother' is far from 'perfect' and I love the honesty with which she faces up to her feeling about her child, her relationship with the child's father and with being a single parent in a culture where this is viewed with great suspicion. The language is quite poetic at times, and flows through the stories, capturing the changing seasons, light and shade, emotional ups and downs quite beautifully. A lot happens, and nothing much happens. But it's all nicely told and quite engaging.

I am a huge fan of Japanese literature and Territory of Light didn't disappointment. This is a very poetic short novel about the aftermath of a mother's separation from her husband.

A reasonable snapshot of 70s Japan as seen through the eyes of a single mother living with her daughter in a big apartment above some offices and shops. The detail is what you'd come for, as the plot – almost linked stories, in a way, hinting at the way it was first presented in monthly instalments – isn't the best, and feels a little inconsequential come the end. Also, the period setting does allow for her to show a woman waiting for a divorce to really be persona non grata, which is interesting but slightly too repetitive here. Neither is either female a wholly likeable character.

I do not often read much Japanese literature but when I do I'm never disappointed. This wonderful profund and poetic piece of work was originally published between 1978 and 1979 in 12 parts in a literary monthly magazine with each chapter corresponding to the actual month when published. Now in one edition it is little more than novella length and can be comfortably read in a few sittings. Written in the first person the narrator (we never know her or her child's name) reflects on her daily life living in a fourth floor Tokyo apartment with her 2 year old child and working has a librarian at a local radio station having recently separated from her husband.

The daily mundane rituals of getting up, taking the daughter to the nursery on the way to work are all related but on top of this is a woman who is attempting to figure out what the future will hold. Increasingly as the book progresses through the months, she becomes more distracted and consumed with what she has lost and the spiritual meaning of existence itself. The writer Yuko Tsushima's own father committed suicide when she was 1 year old and I would say that the absence of a father as evidenced in this story is also a central theme.

This may not appeal to everyone and it is not plot driven but it is so beautifully written and contains pathos and much insight into the human condition that I would recommend this if you are looking for something a little different.

This was my first real foray into Japanese literature and I wasn't disappointed. Territory of Light was originally written in twelve instalment for a Japanese magazine back in the late 1970s. It follows a mother and her young daughter in the first year of separation from her husband. The writing is restrained and delicate with light, in its many forms, as the main image.

There is very little action in the novel which contents itself with descriptions of the unnamed mother and daughter and their daily lives. There were some interesting observations on the way in which a single mother is, or maybe was, viewed by Japanese society. I found those quite depressing.

This is a lyrical and poetic short novel. I'd suggest it might be a good introduction to Japanese writing.

I received a complimentary copy of the book from NetGalley and publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you.

Not for me. I’m afraid I was bored very quickly and didn’t really enjoy the writing style. A totally subjective review, of course, and there will be those who love it, just not me.

I started reading this with great hope from the description but I got bored with the main character. It just seemed to be a rather pointless book.