#16 of 2009: Paprika by Yasutaka Tsutsui

I have to preface this review by admitting something very important - I am a fan of anime auteur Satoshi Kon. I have been since first seeing his feature film Perfect Blue ten or more years ago. Millennium Actress is quite possibly one of my favorite films ever. I’ve seen all of his films, every episode of his television series Paranoia Agent and even the omnibus film Memories, of which one episode, Magnetic Rose, was scripted by Kon.

I am also a fan of Japanese literature. If I can find it affordably, I’ll add any piece of Japanese fiction to my growing library. Some of my favorite authors, Kirino, Miyabe, Yamada, Takahashi, I found through blind Amazon searches and “If you’re a fan of X, try Y” promotions.

Lately I’ve been on a reading kick that could be boiled down to “the stranger, the better.” Metafiction, epistolary narratives, retellings of classic tales, hazily defined science fiction. I like to believe that by broadening my choices in pleasure reading I may also be able to broaden my intellect. Who knows if this is true or not, but I follow the concept like it’s my own personal religion. Expand your ideas, expand your brain.

When I found out, several months ago, that the novel Satoshi Kon based his most recent film on was finally going to be published in English, a mere sixteen years after its original Japanese debut, I was beyond ecstatic. It’s not often that both a literary-based film and its inspiration are translated from Japanese into English. A lot of books are left out of the loop, and the ones that do end up published more often than not take forever to be translated.

Then something not completely unusual, but always infuriating, happened. The book was being published in Europe only, by a UK publisher. I’m not sure why this happens so frequently, but often a book that is translated from Japanese into English will only come out in Europe. It seems that some publishing houses operate on one side of the Atlantic only, and occasionally when the rights are snatched up on one side the publishers on the other all give it a pass. Taichi Yamada, for example, is an author whose works are generally more available in Europe. Only one of his novels, Strangers, was published in the United States. It was picked up by Vertical, a niche publisher of Japanese novels, comics and nonfiction. His other two books were published only by London publisher Faber & Faber.

Yasutaka Tsutsui’s novel Paprika seems to have suffered the same fate. Published only by UK publisher Alma Books, Paprika is not an easy book to come by. I spent twenty dollars buying it from an eBay merchant with a book warehouse in the UK. It took some time for it to get here, but the money and the wait was well worth it.

Paprika is a hard novel to describe, seeing that it splits its time between rigid Japanese social constructs and the anything goes logic of dreams. Set in an indiscriminate present day, the novel, though written in the third person, focuses mainly on Atusko Chiba, psychiatrist and clinician for the Institute for Psychiatric Research. Chiba uses new technological developments, made possible by the mechanical genius of coworker Kosaku Tokita, to enter patients’ dreams and interact with them in the realm where their psychological issues manifest and grow stronger. In analyzing and manipulating dreams, Chiba and her patients (who see her as her alter ego Paprika, a younger, freckled version of herself) are able to work through the issues that cause such things as depression, schizophrenia and nervous breakdowns. This must be done in extreme secrecy, however, because using the new devices outside of the Institute is not exactly legal, and Paprika’s clientele are loath to be found out by the public. Hence, the use of Chiba’s second identity is of the utmost importance.

When Tokita creates a newer, stronger wireless device called the DC Mini, meant to more effectively plumb the depths of patients’ dreams, neither he nor Chiba, nor any of their colleagues or the members of high society Paprika has been secretly treating, are prepared for the consequences. Prolonged exposure to these devices, which were not engineered with any protective measures in place, can cause dream and reality to begin merging, and one person’s dreams can bleed into another.

And now, someone has stolen the DC Minis.

Having seen the film before reading the novel, I have to say I was quite surprised by how faithfully in places the book was recreated. There were the usual blendings of characters and unfortunate omitting of others, but the soul of the narrative remained completely intact. Reading the book felt like experiencing an enhanced version of the film, a Director’s Cut with hours of extra footage. It rounded out the story and made it feel more complete, and explained the difficult mapping of character relationships, office politics and dream objects much better than a film ever could. Reading the novel, with all of its graphic sexuality and fierce emotion, was like being privy to the scenes between scenes.

I can’t focus on the plot for fear that I’ll accidentally give something away, but suffice it to say that Paprika is amazing, just as fresh and impressive in book form as it was as an animated film, and every penny spent tracking down a copy is worth it.

5/5