Review: Astral Season, Beastly Season by Tahi Saihate (translated by Kalau Almony)

This short, macabre novel begins with a fun, high school bloodbath but becomes something much more contemplative. High school student Yamashiro is a dedicated and desperately uncool fan of “cute idol” Mami Aino, whom he furtively goes to see perform in the city. Unfortunately, Aino-san has just been charged with murdering another teenager: “she cut him up, and laid out the pieces like a star … he looked cute.”

This can’t stand; Yamashiro’s idolisation of Aino is based on the effort she has to put in — she has no natural talent. But if she really is a murderer, that would make her exceptional. “I have to prove to the world that you are truly normal,” Yamashiro says, “You’re sad and pathetic, so I can look down on you however much I want” (the first section of this novel is a letter addressed to Aino). To that end he concocts a plan to scapegoat someone else for the murder. For this he ropes in popular, beautiful classmate and fellow Aino fan Morishita, who is only too happy to assist, and to take things way too far. This first section is a deranged and perverse trip through the teenage mind, desperate to impress and willing to risk it all for a moment in the sun.

But then Saihate gives this a twist, revisiting the scene of the crime(s) two years later, as one of the students returns to her hometown to catch up with other survivors. One has just done a press interview remembering the murderer as a “good guy”. Another whose sister was killed understandably has taken umbrage at this. They wrestle with moving on, their responsibilities, the parts they played in the tragedy. The survivors have become stigmatised, particularly if they continue to talk about their trauma, “it’s only natural that you must avoid those people who try to keep looking directly at the things we must not acknowledge”. Such is the lot of those committed to truth-telling, however uncomfortable it might get.

“They say at the age of seventeen, you either become a star or a beast,” Yamashiro writes. “I have no clue at all what I’ve become,” a survivor says later. Astral Season, Beastly Season is a committed unearthing of the horrors and wonders of adolescence, of the confidence and self-doubt and social rules that gradually grow into something more complicated and uncertain. On a school trip to Kyoto, Yamashiro is bored by the beauty and history. Instead, his eye is drawn to what he sees as the abject reality of growing up:

I most identified with the middle-aged men standing in those desolate towns I saw from the bus window. Those men walking alone, not even wearing suits. I felt … that I would grow up into that sort of adult.

But there’s something defiantly vital about these poor teenagers. “In youth we criticise both ourselves and others in their full humanity. It’s only lonely adults that call others less than human,” writes Taino in one of two afterwords (which are themselves beautiful pieces of writing). It’s hard to feel as much as a teenager.

Gay rating: 1/5 for homoerotic vibes between Yamashiro and Morishita.