The Silent Cry: A Novel [Paperback]

Kenzaburo Oe (Author), John Bester (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 1994

The Silent Cry traces the uneasy relationship between two brothers who return to their ancestral home, a village in densely forested western Japan. While one brother tries to sort out the after-effects of a friend's suicide and the birth of a retarded son, the other embarks on a quixotic mission to incite an uprising among the local youth. Oe's description of this brother's messianic struggle to save a disintegrating local culture and economy from the depredations of a Korean wheeler-dealer called "The Emperor of the Supermarkets" is as chillingly pertinent today as it was when first published in 1967. Powerful and daring, The Silent Cry is a thoroughly compelling classic of world literature.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Major feat of the imagination." -The Times

"A formidable scholar and intellectual whose novels express the moral soul-searching of postwar Japan." -The Boston Globe

"Oe ... seems to me to have in him a touch of Dostoevsky." -Henry Miller

Language Notes

Text: English, Japanese (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha USA (July 7, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 4770019653
• ISBN-13: 978-4770019653
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #349,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An awesome landmark of a novel : a masterpiece, June 12, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Silent Cry: A Novel (Paperback)

Kenzaburo Oe's "The Silent Cry" is a masterpiece. No two ways about it. It's a dark, complex, and difficult piece of work and not easy to digest unless you have a modicum of knowledge of Japanese socio-economic history. The spirit of revival of the feudal uprising of 1860 is the central motif that renders the dialectical relationship and the unspeakable horror visited upon the two Nedokoro brothers, Mitsu and Takashi, ultimately comprehensible. While radical younger brother Takashi needs to relive the heroic (real or imagined) past of his great granduncle to bring a measure of validity to his own existence, older brother Mitsu's life crumbles when he sires a horribly retarded child whom he institutionalizes and then fails to come to terms with the ritualistic suicide of his best friend. So does Mitsu's marriage to his wife, Natsumi, who takes to the bottle and appears headed for disaster until brother-in-law Takashi imbues her with fire and converts her to his cause. But there's no happy ending and she's cruelly let down. Takashi's rabid vendetta against the Emperor, the Korean supermarketeer, and his cruelty towards his disciples is a perversion in his search for truth. Mitsu's inability to break out of his self imposed inner exile, his refusal to connect with the past and his corrosive negativism poisons everything about him, including his marriage to Natsumi, which is wryly but painfully observed. Oe employs the imagery of the dark encroaching forest over the valley to evoke a dangerous sense of foreboding that builds to a shattering climax when shocking family secrets are revealed but there's no relief, forgiveness or healing in the aftermath. Nevertheless, Oe avoids an entirely downbeat ending by pulling off a stunning surprise that forces Mitsu to re-examine and give his life another go. The ritualistic suicide of Mitsu's friend is the dramatic manifestation of the "silent cry" of truth he finds unutterable. At another level, "The Silent Cry" can be read as a study of an insular nation coping with the rising tide of foreign influences that threatens the old way of life. It's incredibly rich in its treatment of a universal theme that will guarantee its relevance forever. Oe writes with a rare intensity that perfectly captures the strangeness and beauty of the Japanese psyche. It's an awesome landmark of a novel that no serious lover of literature can afford to miss. Some may find "The Silent Cry" a dark and disturbing piece of work. Perhaps it is. But it's essential reading.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Weird and wonderful surreal tragi-comedy, June 23, 2001

By 

Ian Muldoon (Coffs Harbour, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Silent Cry: A Novel (Paperback)

It has been said by some that to know a country is to read its novels; far better than to read its (manufactured) history. Novels too are manufactured but novels are more likely to expose the emotional and spiritual "truth" of the country concerned. In THE SILENT CRY the writer OE covers much historical, emotional, social, Japanese ground but does it in such a way as to make it a wonderfully entertaining journey for the reader. I for one would love to read a Freudian criticism of it. For example, a recurring motif is suicide, in various forms, one being hanging and that image is conveyed by a the anti-hero's best friend who removed all his clothes, painted his head red, shoved a cucumber up his arse and then hanged himself; another being the anti-hero's brother who shot himself in the head the remains of which reminded the brother of a pomegranate. Such vivid imagery recurs throughout this novel. Another distinguishing feature of it is its lack of cliches, its almost poetic prose, poetic in the sense of dense. You daren't skip a phrase let alone a line. It is a rich read. Historically, the novel covers the transition from an agrarian village life to the impact of the supermarket, racism, the vulnerability of the Japanese economy (this written in 1966- in 2001 have the Japanese finally faced up to real economic reform?)foreigners, and on the cover, an artistic representation of the Hiroshima ground zero. The one-eyed hero is self-effacing and has an alcoholic wife, retarded son and is a cuckold. His brother is vain, hostile, proud, an adulterer who has sex with his retarded sister. It is true that it is reminiscent of the Cain and Abel story or the Brothers Karamazov and I think it deserves mention in that mythical company. Its themes that resonate with me most tellingly are the need for one and one's country to come to terms with the truth about the past. The anti-hero Mitsu is on a search for the "truth" throughout the novel.As an individual I need to come to terms with my mother's suicide as well as other aspects of my personal history. As an Australian, my nation needs to come to terms with its past and our genocidal attitude to Aboriginal Australians. The second theme for me is that constant internal worrying and guilt can be self-defeating - at the close of the novel Mitsu feels "throughout the time remaining to me..a hundred pairs of eyes (of his cat, of his great grandfather, brother, wife) would glitter like a chain of stars in the night of my experience. And I would live on, suffering agonies of shame under the light of those stars, peering out timidly like a rat, with my single eye, at a dim and equivocal outer world..."(p.269) Yet, at the urging of his now pregnant wife, he chooses to accept a job in Africa instead of a job at a University, symbolic I would guess of his need to accept the past come to terms with it and get on with living, for some sort of peace. Survival becomes the key to that peace. Its weird at the end too because despite all the preceding horrors, the novel's ending creates in the reader a wry grin or satisfying chuckle as the anti-hero realises with his new job he may be able to achieve an important personal goal - building a thatched hut.A memorable read.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Apex of postmodern literature, August 23, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Nagoya, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Cry (Hardcover)

The Silent Cry is Oe's triumph. It questions the stories and histories that build our identity. In the story we learn that what really happened in the past is not nearly as important as what people think happened, and the lies our myths perpetuate. We are at the mercy of our history. We are controlled, not by the Gods, but by the stories of our past.