In my review o Kawakami’s ニシノユキヒコの恋と冒険 (UK: The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino; US: The Ten Loves of Nishino), I started by saying Love can be difficult. Person A loves Person B but the love is not entirely (or even at all) reciprocated. Even when they do love one another, problems can occur. Things change, life happens. However, when it does not work out, there is a lingering memory of a past love, a memory that can last for a lifetime. This is what this book is about. It is also what this book is about.

Our heroine/narrator is Riko. She falls in love at an early age, specifically when she is two. He is Naruya Harada, known as Naa-chan You may wonder what a child that young can know of love. And you’d be right to wonder. I myself had no idea why I loved him so. Though younger than her father, he had been a friend of her father – same school, same university, same football team – and was a regular visitor to the house. Riko was an only child and had had a happy childhood. When she went to kindergarten, she was not happy. She made no friends, found the other children too boisterous and hated the school lunches. The only friend she made was Mr Takaoka, the caretaker. She got on well with him. He was still quite young and had trained as Buddhist monk but given up. The other children despised him.

When she is older Naa-chan moves away to Kyushu (she and her family live in Tokyo). She learns that he has a girlfriend as they have been writing to each other. She is twenty-four when he finally returned to Tokyo and he is surprised to find not the girl he knew but an attractive woman. One thing leads to another and soon they are engaged and then married. They live with her parents. However she soon learns that he has not made a clean break with the woman from Kyushu.

Riko is learning the koto with Michiko-sensei and it is she who suggests they should get a place of their own but Riko says that both her parents like having Naa-chan around.

Then she suspects there is yet another woman. He wasn’t the type who jumped into bed with whomever happened to be around, that’s for sure. Yet, as I said before, his nature made it impossible for him to reject a woman with whom he had shared a heartfelt conversation.. Then she finds out that he is even seeing Michiko-sensei. It gets worse when he has a fling with the fiancée of his company’s vice-president. When that ended he was devastated and, when she found out, so was she. Naa-chan no longer cared for me, first of all. Beyond that, though, an even deeper sadness that I had lost all desire to look after him, even though I had once been happy to place my heart at his feet.

At this time Mr Takaoka, the former school caretaker, reappeared in her life. He had been travelling round the country, living rough. Mr Takaoka helps her and tells her that she can learn magic to help her.

She now lives her ordinary life but also lives a life in her dreams. In her dreams she is living many years ago. She came from a big family and one source of income for such families is to sell their daughters to teahouses in Tokyo. She becomes what we woulc call a geisha but Kawakami does not use the word, rather having a series of expressions depending on the geisha’s status. It is not a particularly easy life – step out of line and the punishment is brutal – but she seems to like it and is soon immersed in it. She discovers a lot more about sex, for example. All the time she is discussing what is going on with Mr Takaoka. Eventually she meets a former samurai, Mr Takada. He seems to be a bit like Mr Takaoka and it is clear that the boundaries between her real life and her dream life are very fluid. One of the strict rules is that the women must not fall in love with a man as, of course, they must be available for many men and get as much money out of them as possible. We see what happens when one woman does fall in love with her client and pays a very heavy price. Riko’s alter ego – she is called Shungetsu – falls for Mr Takada and they plan to elope. En route we learn who Mr Takada really is. He is Prince Takaoka, a historical character, who was also the hero of a book I recently reviewed.

Back in the real world she is still with Naa-chan but things are not entirely happy. I am still in love with Takada. I wish I had spent my life with him. Fled with him to the ends of the earth. and I didn’t doubt that our marriage would bring happiness. Now, fiinally, I have to accept that the knight on the white charger is just a human being, and that I am not the princess who lives happily ever after.

Things get more complicated when, at least in her dream world, when she moves much further back in time and, initially, she is the ten year old maid in waiting to a princess. We follow both her life and the life of her princess. At least some of the characters are clearly historical. Takada/Takaoka also appears in another guise. In short we have Riko with two past lives meeting Mr Takaoka regularly in real life but also in both her dream lives.

All of this takes place against what is happening in her real life – her not always smooth relationship with her husband, the birth of her son Toji and, later, her decision to get a job. At the same time she discourses on the many complications of love. She considers the situation in the present and also in the past and compares the three variations and not only as regards love but also the role of women in the different eras and relationship between the sexes. Heian aristocrats followed a single path. Today, however, a hundred married couples will follow a hundred different paths. Freedom is great, no doubt about it. But it brings its own complications.

Love is complicated. I think we all know that. Of course it is more complicated for Riko as she has a love life both in the present and the past – two pasts, in fact. Two of the men who have vast love lives – her husband and Ariwara no Narihira, the husband of the princess in her second past dream life, have many lovers but it does not seem to make them happy, far from it, in fact. In short, at least in Kawakami’s view, there is no easy answer, whether in the present or the past, no straightforward route to the ideal love life.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Granta for a review copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

The Third Love follows Riko, a young woman trapped in a marriage to her childhood sweetheart. Like with many relationships, what started out as a romance for the ages quickly soured into a life of lies and cheating. Riko knows that her husband is cheating on her with numerous different women over a long period of time, however she wants to hold onto the original feelings she’d felt when the relationship blossomed. She meets an old friend, Mr Takaoka, a man who holds a power to live within his dreams. After being taught to use this baffling skill, Riko’s story begins to blossom away from her husband and into a past world.

How to view this story when there isn’t too much of a story at all? You’d think that the premise is an easy lay up for some truly wondrous escapades, but it rarely ever reaches a point of enjoyment that will grip. Kawakami has found an idea for a story, but her execution of said idea seems to be based around a retelling of historical facts; a way to inform the reader of how life in various eras of Japan played out for women of those times. Is there anything wrong with giving a factual retelling of these periods? Of course not. Historical fiction finds numerous ways to make the placing of a character in a specific period feel interesting and attention grabbing.

The issue with this book, however, is in the way the story is told. It feels overly stretched for what is a back and forth romance, with very little progression being felt in the main character. Despite such abilities to enhance the character being opened up, the opportunity to give Riko any growth is stalled by a constant need to remind the reader of Riko’s relationship and general life problems. We know that Riko is struggling; reminding us of this fact on every few pages begins to feel like the author doesn’t have much to speak about and is just ramming the same repetitive information down the reader’s throat. Cutting this story by at least 70 pages could see a tighter and more rewarding experience being had by all.

A quietness that comes with many Japanese stories can be found here, but those stories usually have a significant pulling power in other areas away from action and excitement. They’re surreal. The characters change dramatically. The environments become the main attraction. This isn’t the case with The Third Love. The simplistic language is where the story fails in it’s final need to pull in the reader. If your story is whispering, at least write with a difference and a desire beyond the need to fill the page.

There just wasn’t enough in the books to warrant it’s length. An impact would have been left if some heavy editing had taken place to cut it down to a suitable length.

2.5 stars

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Granta publishing for the free digital ARC of Hiromi Kawakami's novel 'The Third Love'.

I've really enjoyed Kawakami's previous novels but unfortunately 'The Third Love' didn't quite click with me.

The novel centres around Riko, a woman in her 30s, who married her much older childhood crush.
Their marriage doesn't match the idea of love she had before she married him. Her husband is selfish and unfaithful, and his infidelity causes her to go through an emotional turmoil.
She reconnects with a friend from her past, Mr. Takaoka, who she goes to for comfort and companionship.
He teaches her how to live inside her dreams which offers her a lot of insight in to her own life.
These dream experiences take her to the 17th century Japan where she takes on the role of a prostitute in Tokyo, and then to the Middle ages where she works as a servant for a Japanese princess.

Even though the author makes it clear that Riko is dreaming, the writing style and structure make the historical parts of the novel feel like time-travel.
Riko's character is very passive. She has horrible things happen to her in her dreams and in real life, but she never seems to be bothered by it all.
The writing was a bit too slow for my taste and the dream sequences became a bit confusing at times.
I really enjoyed reading about the history of women in Japan and their place in society, but that wasn't enough to keep me truly enganged.
It was a captivating tale but it sadly fell flat for me.

My favourite author hasn’t let me down yet again! I could not put this down! It is written so beautifully and is so immersive that I finished it with two days, when i reluctantly had to put it down to work I picked it back up at the first opportunity. Another treasure to add to my collection by Hiromi Kawakami.

Having read and really enjoyed Strange Weather in Tokyo, I was quite looking forward to reading another books by Kawakami, but sadly I didn’t quite enjoy this one as much as the other one I’ve read. Saying that, I will go back and try a few of her other earlier novels.

I generally enjoy Kawasaki, there’s a beautiful simplicity to it and her explorations of relationship dynamics are, to me, very interesting. This one didn’t fail to deliveries on that front for me.

However I did find some of the character development, or maybe lack there of, let this books down. I thought the time split device in this book would highlight the differences and changes in women’s lives and expectations in Japanese society but it didn’t quite do it as I expected.

Nevertheless I think it’s a worth while read for fans of magic realism and for those who like a slightly slower deep dive into marital relationships as well as familial ones.

2.5 stars rounded up. Thank you to NetGalley and Granta for the ARC.
I have read a couple of other books by Kawakami and really enjoyed them but unfortunately I found this to be such a disappointment. The story centres around Riko who has married her childhood sweetheart and now finds herself in a marriage where she seems to exist purely for the comfort and satisfaction of her selfish and unfaithful husband. The narrative then shifts into a dreamwalking/time-travel tale where Riko is able to experience life as a 17th Century courtesan and as a servant to a Princess in the Middle Ages.
The premise of the story was really interesting, and Kawakami is able to evoke historical Japan beautifully BUT I really struggled with a narrative that seems to romanticise an old-fashioned, submissive role for women and to fetishise the idea of love so that the main character seems to put up with anything from any man if she thinks she is experiencing love in some form. The time-travel strands, which promised so much, just fizzled out in an extremely unsatisfying way, as if the author had lost interest in them and there were some quite problematic scenes (including non-consensual sex which the author chooses to eroticise) which I hope will be accompanied by trigger warnings in the final published version.
It may be that I am missing something, reading the book as I am through a modern, white, Western lens, but this book really was not for me.

I'm a big fan of Kawakami's writing so I was excited for this one. I liked the thematic work but I don't think the writing was as solid.

This is the story of Riko, a woman in her 30s, married to someone she fell in love with while an early teen. She struggles to understand and live with the pervasive nature of her love, tries to reconcile her love for her husband with his ongoing popularity with other women, and yearns to find a path to self-realisation and finding someone else to love. This journey is interspersed with episodes of Riko dreaming of living the life of a courtesan in the Edo period, and of a lady-in-waiting to a high born lady in the Heian period. The story also draws heavily from Takaoka's Travels, and the character of Takaoka is omnipresent in the book and across the timelines described in it.

I found the book intellectually interesting - its structure, form, and delivery were challenging (in a good way), and I enjoyed this challenge a lot. It helped that, completely by chance, I read Takaoka's Travels just a few months ago, creating a stronger link to the book than I might have otherwise felt.

I struggled, though, with the content. While the role of women in contemporary Japanese society leaves a lot to be desired, the protagonist seems to be stuck in this self-imposed version of a traditional wife, and sees herself as a function of her devotion (not love) to her husband. The historical analogues go a long way towards reinforcing this point, and while Riko's eyes are somewhat opened in the process, she remains the type of woman that one would typically struggle to call "modern". It's never clear whether Riko's characterisation is intended as a backhanded critique of the entire situation, or the author's own confusion about what a woman's role should be. This really annoyed me - I struggled to see the point of it all, and I felt, having completed the book, that I've learned little about the questions the book raised. I finished it with a bad aftertaste, mostly due to the lack of sufficient sophistication in dealing with these same questions.

Fans of the author would like this book, and also readers who enjoy Japanese magical realism, as well as links to its literary past and heroes. That being said - it's mostly a miss for me. I'm not sure I'm left with anything noteworthy having read it. Reading it without having the benefit of reading Takaoka's travels first would have made it impossible to finish, for me.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.

The Third Love (June 2024) is Hiromi Kawakami's latest English title, a translation of her Sandome no Koi (2020) by Ted Goossen. While I'm a fan of Kawakami, I have not read the original work.

The story revolves around Riko, who is married to Naruya (fondly, Naa-chan), whom she has loved since meeting him in her childhood. By "childhood" I mean she was two and he was in junior high. Go figure the age gap. Anyway, everything seems peachy in the marriage at first, but she soon discovers his involvement with other women.

As a child, Riko also befriends her elementary school janitor Mr Takaoka. Again, go figure. She laters meet him again in her adulthood, and he offers her a magical trick: living different worlds in her dreams. It becomes a form of escape from her troubled marriage.

In the first dream world, she's a high-ranking courtesan in the Edo period, while in the next she's a handmaid to a Heian era princess. Each time period was vividly described, taking the reader on a time-travelling journey as Riko explores love and relationship in different forms and perspectives. Through the surreal experience, she acquires a change to her way of thinking.

Worth noting there's a motif based on Ise Monogatari (Tales of Ise) in this novel. Naa-chan is clearly modeled after Narihira, with all his forbidden affairs and the one love that leaves him devastated. Kawakami herself said in an interview that she was inspired after translating Tales of Ise into modern Japanese for a collection of Japanese literature in 2016.

On a whole, The Third Love is a love story that spans across time and space. While some things don't quite make sense, the ambiguity is what gives the story its charm. I'd say, read it with an open mind.

I've read several of Kawakami's previous novels and surprisingly this felt the most traditionally Japanese.

In Third Love the author uses classic novels such as Tale of Genji and Tales of Ise to provide an almost fairy tale quality to the story of Riko and her marriage to Naa-Chan.

Riko has been in love with Naa-Chan since she was a child and is delighted when her feelings are reciprocated but Naa-Chan's desire for other women continues and Riko finds herself restarting a friendship with the old caretaker from her school, Mr Takaoka, when Naa-Chan's affairs affect her love for him. Mr Takaoka teaches Riko about his magical ability to transport himself into other times giving Riko the escape she needs.

The book is split into three parts - a tale from long ago where Riko is transported into the body of an oiran (a high-ranking courtesan); a tale from long long ago when she finds herself in the body of a princess's handmaiden and then a tale of today where she is herself.

The stories all have echoes of each other, Riko's real life and the stories in Tales of Ise. I found it absolutely enchanting. It was completely different to any of her books I've read previously. She has a chameleon quality to her work and it continually surprises.

Highly recommended.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Granta Publications for the advance review copy.

Thank you to Hiromi Kawakami, Granta Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

While I was reading this I couldn't help but want to see this as a TV series. I've only recently finished FX's Shōgun and I'm always on the look out for more Japanese historical fiction. I think a series would be better than a single film so you can properly appreciate the sheer amount of life Riko experiences in her dreams.

I love historical fiction, especially anything set so far back that everything is completely different to now. I love reading about pre 19th Century Japan, before the borders were opened for western trade.

The dream sections were set in the 17th Century and the Heian period (8th to 12th Century) and it's clear that lots of research went into this to really make Riko's dreams come to life. I can't imagine how long it would have taken to find out about all the different rituals and what the people were wearing.

This book was very easy to read, the pace was slow and it was a good length. The writing feels delicate in a way that I'm coming to see that is very Japanese. It's a beautiful tale exploring love in all of its forms, desire and intimacy. I'll definitely be looking into Kawakami's other work for my next reads.

I give The Third Love 4 stars.

My review for The Third Love will be out on 26th May 2024.

Thank you to @netgalley and @grantabooks for this #arc #hiromikawakami translated by #tedgoossen #thethirdlove

I have now read 6 of Kawakami's books, each one has be engaging and I have enjoyed it. My reservations at the beginning of this book centred around my fear that the lead characters would flit from one dream world to the next. I am pleased to say that wasn't the case at all.

I wasn't sure how the format was going to work at first as the lead female character jumped from real life to dream world life. It became clear that she was in a massive state of reflection, self exploration and general understanding or maybe learning about life, relationships and sex. This was delivered in a fantastic way which really showed deep thinking and learning for the female lead.

The story didn't flinch or shy away from anything difficult or challenging and certainly didn't offer a hollyepf ending or anything predictable. I think, for me, it really made me think about my place in this world, where I have come from how how I got here and where I plan on being in the future.

If you fancy a really good story that keeps you on your toes, doesn't sit still and makes you reflect. This book is for you, enjoy! Out 6th June 2024 in the UK.

#honnomushi100 #reading #japanesefiction #translatedfiction #translatedjapanesefiction #booksfromjapan #booklover #bookstagram #translatedgems #japaneseauthor #translatedjapaneseliterature #japaneselit #JAPANESEAUTHORS #newjapanesefiction
#books2024 #newbooks2024

A strange and beautiful little book about a woman whose obsession with the man who becomes her husband starts to twist into her dreams, taking her into a dream world that may not actually be a dream, where she experiences love in many different ways. Like all this author's books, this is really weird and hard to explain. It's a mood and an exploration more than anything else. I finished it a few days ago and keep thinking about it.

For me, The Third Love is a sort of meditation on the condition of the modern Japanese woman. This is looked at both from a modern perspective but also as a comparison with the roles women have played along the years, with an accent on Edo and Heian periods. As a novel, this didn't work for me, sadly. Firstly I couldn't really connect with Riko. Her solitude was beyond anything I have experienced and her love life...definitely not something I would have put up with! But then the magical fantasy taking the form of vivid dreams was slightly confusing at first and hardly believable. The repetition of the tragic love myth from The Tales of Ise was fascinating at first, but then started grating to the point of frustration. I've also seen echoes of Strange Weather in Tokyo, Kawakami previous novel, in Riko's relationship with Mr Takaoka, which am not certain if it was a good or a bad thing!

Overall I think the form is what doesn't work here. Personally I would have enjoyed this much for as an essay or even as non-fiction.

“The Third Love” by Hiromi Kawakami is a fascinating exploration of love, self-discovery, and the complex interplay between past and present. The novel follows Riko, who, after marrying her childhood sweetheart, finds herself trapped in a relationship marred by infidelity. Kawakami’s nuanced portrayal of Riko’s emotional turmoil is both compelling and deeply moving.

The story takes an intriguing turn when Riko reconnects with her old friend Mr. Takaoka, who not only offers her companionship and affection but also introduces her to the extraordinary ability to live inside her dreams. This element of magical realism is handled with Kawakami’s signature delicacy, adding a rich, imaginative layer to the narrative. Each night, Riko escapes into different historical lives—first as a high-ranking courtesan in the 17th century and then as a serving lady to a princess in the late Middle Ages. These dream sequences are vividly described and provide profound insights into Riko’s subconscious desires and fears.

Through these dream experiences, Riko begins to reevaluate her life in the 21st century. The contrast between her dream lives and her waking reality serves as a powerful catalyst for her introspection. Kawakami masterfully uses these historical parallels to explore timeless themes of love, fidelity, and personal agency. The historical settings are richly detailed, immersing the reader in different eras and enhancing the overall sense of escapism.

The characters are multifaceted and well-developed. Riko’s journey is particularly poignant as she grapples with her roles as a wife, mother, and lover. Her evolving relationship with Mr. Takaoka adds depth to the story, highlighting her struggle between duty and desire. Kawakami’s prose is lyrical and evocative, perfectly capturing the emotional landscapes Riko traverses.

Overall, “The Third Love” is a beautifully written and thought-provoking novel that blends reality and fantasy to explore the depths of the human heart. Hiromi Kawakami’s storytelling is both elegant and compelling, making this a memorable read that I highly recommend.

A story in which Riko marries her childhood sweetheart then has epic daydreams which take her first to C17 Japan where she’s a prostitute in the Tokyo pleasure district then as a servant to a C9 Japanese princess. In all of these settings, Riko has sex and ponders the relationships between men and women down the ages. There are also some entertaining side-swipes at Japanese men who find competent, intelligent women unattractive (when really it should of course be the opposite).

As has been noted by other reviewers, the novel skips around in time a lot: one paragraph could be contemporary Riko with the next being her C9 daydream, then back again. I’m not sure whether it would be possible therefore to separate the different times into different chapters to help the reader follow what’s going on. I think this is a conceit you either get on with or not.

An interesting read where you need to suspend your disbelief. There are sex scenes in the novel, especially given her daydreams, but these are not graphic, modern romance (soft porn) style scenes. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I thought it was a remarkable piece of work. A masterful, full work that delves into the depths of love, weaving through dreams and lingering in the thrills of both past and present.

1.5. I'm a fan of Meiko, but have never read Hiromi. Maybe she's as good, but this (her newest translated book, coming out next month sometime), was not the book to prove her worth to me. The idea far outweighed the execution, which is more painful to swallow than simply a bad book. The narrator is taught, by her old school janitor, to travel in her dreams. She travels to the Edo period, and the Heian. Though she is dreaming, it is written as if it is happening, so it feels more like a time-travel book. In the present, the narrator is dealing with her husband, her childhood sweetheart, who, despite having numerous affairs and being generally shitty to her, she loves. In her dreamscapes, she takes on several traditional Japanese women roles, one such role being something similar to a Handmaid from the Atwood novel - her only purpose is to entertain men with her body. Eventually, it turns into a bad version of Mishima's tetralogy, in that the janitor who taught her this gift also appears recurrently in these dreams. Feelings for him also begin to arise. The whole plot seemed to be centred around the narrator being used (at one point she is raped, too), and mistreated, in the dreams and in reality. She never seems overly bothered by this. The plot trudged along. The writing was childishly simple. I don't think I cared about any two pages of the whole novel. However, for established fans of Hiromi? Perhaps another enjoyable book.

Thanks to Granta for the advanced copy, anyway.

As a passionate reader of translated Japanese fiction, I was very excited about The Third Love. I usually gravitate toward the tempo and mood of this genre because it so often feels very meditative. This book is a gentle and slow moving tale, very characteristic of Japanese fiction, rooted in old customs especially surrounding women. The main character, Riko, while in a relationship with the first big love of her life starts feeling unsatisfied and lonely. A meeting with her old friend sparks a new ability in her, shared with that friend - being able to live a different life in dreams. In this way we get to experience lives of different women from quite far apart points in Japanese history, modern, Edo and Heian periods. Riko embodies underprivileged women, whose experience can be harrowing and tangled with other women and men as orian courtesan and princess’s maid. Her life starts blending with her dream lives and tales she finds having references to those dream lives and they all start informing each other and historical embodiments start informing and influencing Riko’s modern life.
The book intrigued me in the beginning and provided an interesting lesson on women’s history in Japan but it quickly started getting very muddled as there were so many men, women and their complicated relationships. It’s not a surprise that the treatment of women in the past can be very hard to read and I’m not sure this book serves as a critique of that, more just a tale of love and it’s forms according to Japanese customs and history. I did like the idea of the third love but in all honesty it was hard to get there.

Thank you to Granta and NetGalley for the eARC!

I was very excited to get an early copy of this but I found it a difficult book to love when comparing it to strange weather in Tokyo - but there were bits I liked very much. I felt it lost its way somewhere in the middle amongst the dream worlds, although maybe that is the point, that it became a bit rambling and dreamlike. The main threads of the story were very enjoyable though. I like the way Hiromi Kawakami writes.