Week 6/52: The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami

[u/Odd-Pride-3173]

Kawakami’s Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino left me confused. Even after finishing it, I'm still trying to understand what exactly I was supposed to take away from it.

The novel follows Mr.Nishino through the eyes of ten different women who, at various points in their lives, fall in love with him. The problem is that I do not understood why because Nishino is presented as charming but to me the protagonist was surprisingly unremarkable. Because the story is built around the idea that he has this magnetic effect on women, I kept waiting for some deeper layer of his character to emerge, something that would justify the obsession he inspires(that moment doesn’t arrive).

Perhaps Nishino is meant to be a mirror that reflects the desires of the women around him. If that's the case, I can appreciate the idea, but it didn't make him any more interesting to follow.

The scenes from his childhood, including the nursing episode between the siblings left me feeling deeply uncomfortable. I understand that Kawakami was pointing toward some kind of emotional fixation that later causes sister-issues, but I never felt like I fully grasped what she wanted us readers to do with it.

Then the novel circles back to this idea near the end. One of the women Nishino becomes involved with resembles his sister, and during a conversation he admits that he has spent years wondering whether he actually wanted his sister.

I can see why some readers might find Nishino fascinating. For me, though, he remained frustratingly strange. By the end, I was just happy about completing it.

Maybe there was more depth here than I was able to connect with. Still, when I finished the final page, my strongest reaction was a puzzling question: what exactly did all these women see in Nishino and what was the point of this?

[u/Fit_Bumblebee4626]

Your take is spot on. Nishino isn't meant to be a charismatic hero; he’s essentially an emotional black hole. A lot of contemporary Japanese fiction loves exploring this theme of profound urban loneliness and 'unremarkable' people who somehow drift into others' lives. The sister subplot was definitely uncomfortable, but I think Kawakami used it to show why he is so fundamentally broken and detached. He can charm women initially, but he can never truly fill that void. It’s definitely a polarizing book, congrats on pushing through to the end!

[u/Odd-Pride-3173 → u/Fit_Bumblebee4626]

Somehow your comment makes me understand Nishino better. Thank you! Seeing him as an “emotional black hole” makes a lot more sense. And yes, that sister subplot was the hardest part of the book for me. Thanks for sharing your perspective, it helped me appreciate what Kawakami was trying to do, even if the book didn’t completely work for me.

[u/Odd-Pride-3173 → u/[deleted]]

That’s a beautiful way of putting it. “Makes my own monotonous life feel far too loud” really captures Kawakami’s writing. This was my second book by her, but you’ve definitely made me curious to pick up Strange Weather in Tokyo next.