The Guest Cat: Takashi Hiraide

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I’m sure many fellow cat lovers will also be nodding in agreement when reading lines such as this: “For me, Chibi is a friend with whom I share an understanding, and who just happens to have taken on the form of a cat. The young couple become enamoured by this tiny, graceful cat and try to entice her into their house. At all times, however, it is clear that Chibi is the neighbours’ cat, and her visits are accompanied with a sense of loss. Not much happens in the book but it is very evocative and I felt a sense of loss when it was finished. There are throughout the book also references to Fortuna, the classical Roman goddess responsible for good or back luck.

The focus is on poetic beauty in the moment (like haiku), without shadow of sentiment, even when there is good cause for strong emotion.The garden has been carefully planted so that different flowers come into bloom at different times of the year; we notice the tadpoles becoming froglets, and a dragonfly, copulating with its mate while flying, in the shape of “a distorted heart”. For the narrator and his wife observing Chibi is not only a sheer pleasure, it turns out to be thought-provoking also. I think the translator did a very good job of translating this book from Japanese to English and still maintaining the nuance of the story. The book opens with a description of a view through a window, highlighting the monotony of the protagonist’s protracted days.

What's interesting about animals, my wife explained, is that even though a cat may be a cat, in the end, each individual has its own character.Hiraide is a professor of Art Science and Poetics as well as a core member of the new Institute for Art Anthropology at Tama Art University. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife — the days have more light and color.

A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo; they work at home, freelance copyediting, and no longer have very much to say to one another. With all the Japanese works I've read so far, the connectivity of things plays such an important role and a certain melancholy always lingers.

The main love object is Chibi: un- or not-quite-attainable because she’s a cat, exacerbated by her living with neighbours the other side of the alley. There’s plenty of architectural detail about the guesthouse the narrator and his wife rent on the grounds of a mansion, plenty of economic detail about the housing market…but the cat just doesn’t make enough of an impression. It is all so typical of how these independent little creatures become so lovable and part of a family but it is true that they are the ones who chose where they want to spend their time.