Life of a Counterfeiter by Yasushi Inoue

Well, this is not classical, but it was what I was listening to when I wrote this review:  Deezer Session by Agnes Obel.

I have lately become interested in Asian art and literature, particularly from China, Japan, and Korea, but increasingly Vietnam as well.

 I've been not only looking at the traditional, but also the 20th century paintings of artists from these countries.  It's fascinating to see how art expression develops in different countries and how they start to overlap as all countries become more global.

I do not mean that all modern works of art look the same, although I would say that modern painting is not immediately recognizable as coming from a particular country, but that is OK.  It is still a valid form of expression and, while traditional art may be more distinctive to our eyes, due to the isolation of countries from each other in previous centuries, I still can perceive particular cultural influences on even the abstractions that are produced on canvas by artists in this century.

Life of a Counterfeiter by Yasushi Inoue

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I really believe that Yasushi Inoue has become one of my favorite writers. This small book contains a novella, Life of a Counterfeiter, and two short stories, Reeds and Mr. Goodall's Gloves.

Each story is told in a calm thoughtful and also compassionate way. Inoue based his stories on real life and his deep interest in other people shows as he describes, in the first story, his journey to discover who the mysterious Hosen is, a counterfeiter who sold his own paintings under the name of a famous Japanese artist.

In the second story he hearkens back to fragments of a memory of an aunt who lived with his family when he was very young. She apparently had "compromised" herself and was sent to live in Inoue's small village with his family until she married the father. This aunt is written about in his book Shirobamba.

The final story begins with Inoue walking through a Western Cemetery and coming across the gravestone of a man with the name of someone who helped his grandmother years ago. This granny, not really his grandmother but the mistress of his great- grandfather, is another character in Shirobamba. I'm glad I read Shirobamba first, a story about Inoue's childhood in pre-WWI Japan, before this book, because it enabled me to better appreciate the characters.

None of these stories are adventurous, but each one contains a quiet memory, perhaps not exciting, but profound to the author and, thanks to his poetic writing, becomes as profound and beautiful to us as a biographical haiku.



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