The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami

Natsumi was a decade younger than Nishino when she fell in love and began a three-year affair with him. Here, Natsumi, the married mother of Minami, reminisces about the days when her daughter was seven and she herself was in her twenties. Time shifts throughout the book, and Nishino moves back and forth from being a young man to someone in his sixties, which is his age in the opening chapter. As a result, Nishino is a cipher – someone the reader never really gets to know – though he provides whatever the women seem to want for however long they want it – as long as he is not otherwise occupied. Though this sounds as if it might be a feminist theme, Kawakami, a witty and insightful author, also fills her stories with ironies, since the women also become willing victims of a man who, as the lead quotation indicates, does not have to do much to win their approval or even their love – telephoning on time, calling as often as they want, praising them, and being “kind.” Nishino’s primary talent is in tailoring his behavior to whatever each woman wants in order to get whatever he needs. Their meetings with Nishino, sometimes by accident, are usually the catalysts for change, at least temporarily, and it is usually the women who end the relationships.

In ten stories about the loves of Nishino, a man whose primary purpose in life is to seduce and “love” the women he meets, author Kawakami introduces his lovers, women who appear to be in charge of their lives, living independently.

In this story collection, however, the author blurs the lines between reality and imagination in new ways, drawing the reader further into her plots, themes, and characters. One thing a reader can often count on in a book by Hiromi Kawakami is that her main characters will be independent, but deliberately “ordinary,” and that her plot lines will also be unpretentious and solidly realistic. He was detestable – both to men and women.” But Nishino did all of these things with ease. Things so insignificant that no man could pull them off. Calling on the phone at the desired time. “A man who could satisfy a woman’s desires that even she was unaware of, who could draw them out from deep within her heart – that was Nishino.

The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami