Cat’s Cradle

There have been so many Japanese books in translation available of recent years that I have ended up reading a good many myself, such as Sayata Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, Meiko Kawakami’s Breast and Eggs,  Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s series of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Satoshi Yagisawa’s Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, my all time favourite, Yoko Ogawa’s The Housekeeper and the Professor, and now Syou Ishida’s We’ll Prescribe You a Cat. It was nice to find an article in the Guardian titled “Surrealism, cafes and lots (and lots) of cats: why Japanese fiction is booming”, confirming my own sudden increased reading of Japanese writing in translation: “Japanese authors have written nearly half of this year’s bestselling translated novels in the UK”.

The Guardian article explained that certain kinds of heavily curated writing – crime, young women’s literary fiction, comfort books – are travelling well, to the detriment of other genres such as hard sci-fi, supernatural or horror, romance (apart from light novels and manga) historical fiction such as samurai novels, and short story collections. The article observed that urban settings predominate, and suggests that perhaps it is because the Western reader wants something a little different, but not too different, and must be still relatable, “a comfortable other”. Interestingly, there was the observation that by comparison, Western literature creates binaries of good and evil, whereas Japanese literature blurs these categories and leaves endings more open. It also observed that cat literature, even literature without cats in the story, just with a cat or two on the cover, is selling particularly well.

This multiple-cat novel, We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, very much reminded me of the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, in texture and tone, as well as genre. It is that same mix of surrealism, with the solving of the emotional hurts of individuals who happen to wander into the café, in Kawaguchi’s book, and the Nakagyo Kokoro Clinic for the Soul, in Ishida’s novel.

Like Kawaguchi Coffee series, We’ll Prescribe You a Cat is also more by way of a series of short stories connected by the common thread of the clinic. Each story tells of a character who needs comfort in some way, and each comes to this difficult to-find location with the rather cryptic address

“East of Takoyakushi Street, south of Tominokoji Street, west of Rokkaku Street, north of Fuyacho Street, Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto” (p3)

the well lit clinic is at the end of a dark alley, on the 5th floor of a building.

Patients stumble in without an appointment, are cursorily instructed by the brusque receptionist/nurse to go through, and a genial doctor in a white lab coat appears. The patient is asked how they found the place, and when they mumble they heard it from a friend of a friend or some even more tenuous route, the doctor will then explain the clinic is short staffed with just himself and the nurse, and so are not taking any new patients now, but that he will make an exception for the patient since they are a referral. The confused patient is not asked to fill in any forms, or for any medical history context. The session begins almost before the patient is fully aware it has begun, just by the doctor asking what brings them here today. The first patient is a man whose is hating his job, the 2nd is a man who feels like an outsider in his own family, another patient is a mother who is failing to bond with her daughter, yet another is a business woman who has become too much of a perfectionist. In each case, the patient is very quickly prescribed a cat, for a week or two, or 10 days.

Before they can object, they have a cat thrust on them in a carrier, and are told to give the prescription to the receptionist. The doctor reassures them with something like

“Don’t worry. Cats are highly effective, even for those who aren’t used to them” (p10)

The doctor will then say they have to wrap up because another patient is waiting, although no other patient is ever in the waiting room, and hurry the patient out. The receptionist/nurse then gives them a bag with food, water and food bowls, and other essentials for cat care. Every cat comes with instructions and details, such as,

“Name: Bee. Female. Estimated to be around eight years old. Mixed breed. Feed moderate amounts of cat food in the morning and at night. Water bowl must always be full. Clean kitty litter as needed. Generally independent and can be left alone. Small items that can be swallowed and breakable items such as plates and cups should be stowed away in a cupboard. Keep an eye on potted plants. Do not let the cat wander out of the house, That’s all’” (p13)

The bemused patient, who is left wondering what in the world just happened, takes the cat home, and of course adjusts to having a cat in the house, and somehow, good effects seem to unfold, sometimes indirectly, but still, life improves.

This novel will appeal to cat lovers because it has such a lot of passages which are warmly appreciative of cats. They describe a cat’s beauty, elegance, affectionate overtures, as well as stand-offishness.

“Margot was the quintessential mixed-breed cat, her coat a mixture of black and reddish-brown. She also had a couple of white patches at the tips of her paws and at the bas of her neck. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but she exuded an aura of strength. Her eyes were the colour of green tea with a black vertical line at the centre. The sharp, upward tilt of her eyes lent her a touch of wildness. Her lean, long-limbed frame brought to mind the muscularity of a lightweight boxes” (p92-93).

The surrealist part is associated with the clinic sometimes appearing and sometimes disappearing, as well as the connection with Suda Animal Clinic, where Dr Kokoro the vet looks very much like Dr Nikke at the psychiatric clinic. There is also the conflation of the nurse, called Chitose, with a cat which had been prescribed for Abino, a geisha client of the psychiatric clinic. These mystical connections are not clearly explained to spelled out, even at the end, but it doesn’t distract too much from the stories, which is a relief. It doesn’t add much either, except supposedly a magical touch which perhaps is intended to be reassuring, but for a reader like myself who has almost no appreciation of magical realism, if it can manage not to annoy me or distract from the reading experience, I would call that a win. I would have rather less of the ‘coincidences’ and overlaps and surrealist implications and hints; but then I am largely unsympathetic to how these literary devices enhance prose fiction. And Japanese fiction, like Latin American fiction, has of course had a long tradition of surrealism writing. 

Cats are naturally mysterious in the best of ways, enigmatic enough in and of themselves without needing any help from magical realism storytelling. This novel captures their famed independence, their grace in all actions and movements, the sheer pleasure of their shapes and lines, their solitary spirit even when being sociable. It seems to appreciate how cats are always seemingly fully self-aware, always critically thinking, always weighing what they find in their own internal balance. They are open to persuasion and cajoling, but ultimately, are not trying to please. If they turn out to be healers, as this rather charming novel implies, it is peripherally, rather than directly. The unpredictability of how the stories unfold has a pleasing feline quality to them. Although not enamoured by the surrealist parts of the novel, I will be looking forward to the sequel, We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, Again! To be honest, that’s a prescription I would be happy to receive, again and again.

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