{Written by Ari Santiago, this review is part of Issue 46 of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.}
Tahi Saihate (author) and Kalau Almony (translator), Astral Season, Beastly Season, Honford Star, 2021. 144 pgs.
Contemporary young adult fiction has a preoccupation with classification: Hogwarts sorts its students into four houses; Panemโs disenfranchised youth belong to one of twelve districts, which theyโre unlikely to leave in their lifetimes; Ravkaโs grisha are divided into three orders, and then further into various subdivisions. Tahi Saihateโs debut novel Astral Season, Beastly Season isnโt quite what youโd call YA, but it does present a stark sorting scheme of its own for its adolescent protagonists: โThey say that at the age of seventeen, you either become a star or a beast.โ
The novelโs opening teases a few possible interpretations for these terms. The โstarโ, for instance, might refer to Mami Aino, an idol suspected of murder, or it might refer to the young victim of the crime, whose body was chopped up and arranged in the shape of a star. The beast, naturally, would then be the murderer. But Mamiโs crime isnโt the only one in the novel. Upon learning sheโs under suspicion, two of her fans come together to commit copycat murders to draw attention away from herโopening up further possibilities as to who the beasts really are.
The novelโs first part, which lasts for roughly half its length, deals with the copycat murders. Itโs told in a letter addressed to the idol from one of the conspirators, high school student Shota Yamashiro. The letter recounts his and his partner Morishitaโs escapades at a gripping pace, but also provides insights into Yamashiroโs thoughts. They lay bare his discontentment with his horribly banal life, as well as his ambivalent feelings toward Mami Aino. The direct access to Yamashiroโs innermost thoughts is contrasted with the illusive personage of Mami. The motivating figure of the entire first act appears only through the eyes of those who worship her as a star, or suspect her of being a beast. And, as a reader being addressed in her stead, I found myself at first wondering idly, then with increasing fervour, what she thought of the words Shota addressed to herโor, indeed, if they would ever reach her at all.
If nothing else, the novel deserves credit for such effective use of the infamously unwieldy second-person perspective.
The novelโs second half focuses on the aftermath of the murders and is told from the perspective of one of the female students who had been in the orbit of Yamashiro and Morishita. She returns to her hometown years later to meet another classmateโanother โsurvivorโ, she later thinks, considering any one of them could have been a victimโwho had also been close to the pair of conspirators, and who had been interviewed about the events of that traumatic year.
His account is hardly what one would expect, however, describing the murderer as a good guy. The encounter goes from tense to turbulent when another of the bereaved, a brother to one of the murder victims, accosts the young man over his statements. The killer couldnโt have been good, he argues, because he was a murderer. The class had been deceived. A stranger, who knew nothing of the young man before he turned murderer, nonetheless claims this moral certainty.
Can a killer be a good guy? Can a star be a beast, or a beast a star? This question, which expands on Yamashiroโs doubts and moves into the realm of public discourse and history, lies at the heart of the second chapter. Yet despite how directly the story addresses this question and how fiercely it grapples with it, it offers no easy answers. โYes,โ Morishita would seem to say, unconcerned as he was with the possibility that Mami Aino could be a killer. โYes,โ the eulogizing student would agree, maintaining that even killers have good in themโand that the world mustnโt forget that. But theirs is the position of the dissenting minority. Murderers canโt be good guys. Star or beast. Once you enter adulthood, society only lets you choose one.
The novel joins a long and colourful tradition of literary works and texts in other media concerned with the youthโs position in Japanโs broader cultural narratives. Violent youth loomed large in Japanโs psyche from the 1980s to the early 2000s, manifesting itself in fictional works such as Koushun Takamiโs Battle Royale; real-life archetypes such as roaming gangs of delinquents; and in liminal cases, like that of so-called โNevada-tan,โ a grade schooler who killed her classmate with a box cutter, and had her image wrought larger than life on internet forums. Yet, since the turn of the century, new images of dysfunctional youth have appeared. Rather than violently defying norms, these ones simply fell short of them: the obsessive otaku, and the reclusive hikikomori.
Saihateโs novel clearly draws on both images of monstrous adolescence, but is concerned with questioning rather than reifying them. Killers and recluses alike, and dropouts, suicides, layabouts and underachievers too, are all products of a system that tyrannically forces youth to conform to needlessly rigid categories. If they are monsters, it is only because of the corners they are driven into.
While the novel employs imagery endemic to Japan, its concerns are universal. Violence is becoming increasingly and disturbingly commonplace among young people, who, across the world face school shootings, murderous dictatorships, and repressive regimesโand are painted as monsters for lashing out in turn.
Astral Season, Beastly Season takes familiar images and blends them into a disturbingly new mix. It is relentless, intense, and never loses sight of the questions at its heart, nor its unyielding demand that they be given the hard answers they deserve.
Also see this review in Cha:
How to cite:ย Santiago, Ari. โLashing Out: A Review of Tahi Saihateโs Astral Season, Beastly Season.โย Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 04 Jul. 2021, chajournal.blog/2021/07/04/astral-season-beastly-season/.
Ari Santiagoย graduated with an MA in Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Hong Kong, and is currently based in Metro Manila, doing freelance and independent work in content marketing, tabletop game design, and narrative design for games. Their work has been published onย Play Without Apology. [All contributions by Ari Santiago.]