Review: Confessions

湊かなえ（２０１０）『告白』双葉文庫
Minato Kanae (2010), Kokuhaku (Confessions) Futaba Bunko

After the tragic death her young daughter Manami, middle school teacher Ms Moriguchi realises that the circumstances of Manami's death are not as they first appear. Reluctant to put her trust in school, state or parental authority, she doles out her own punishment to the students involved. But is her revenge what it first appears to be? And how far could she have predicted its ultimate consequences? This is the basic story of Minato Kanae's best-seller Confessions. The novel was first published in 2008 and then released in pocket (bunko) form earlier this year; its film adaptation came out in Japan in summer 2010. This short review is based on the bunko edition of the story.

The book is formed by a series of monologues, starting with Ms Moriguchi and moving on to those of three key students in her class (Mizuki, Naoki and Shūya) as well as the mother of one of them. This conceit allows for a succession of twists and turn as the limitations of each individual's perspective are gradually revealed to the reader. At its most slippery, this confronts the reader with five unreliable narrators. But this is at the same time the strength of this form is perhaps that it reflects the chaos and confusion of adolescence better than a more straightforward mystery narrative. Minato does a better job with some of the voices than others: Ms Moriguchi's acidity and dark humour are nicely conveyed, but I felt Minato's choice to show the depths of Naoki's despair by having him repeat words like "death" or "failure" in succession just didn't hit the emotional note that would have been possible with something more articulate. After Moriguchi's electric opening monologue, the pacing sometimes slows a little, but it is a very compelling read and not too challenging for non-native readers either.

I think that if this book (or, perhaps more likely, the film or comic versions) ever reaches a wide English-speaking audience it will be unlikely to escape comparisons with Battle Royale. This, too, is a tale of violent middle schoolers that works as an absorbing story in its own right and also leaves open the possibility of deeper reading as social commentary. In the case of Confessions, reference is made to a number of 'trendy' social problems such as single parenthood, remarriage, and the balance between teacher and parent responsibility in taking care of children and teenagers. There are probably a number of ways to read this, and I felt my biggest weakness as a non-Japanese reader was the difficulty I had in seeing what kind of social comment Minato was trying to make. It seems to me, though, that Confessions shows the potentially disastrous results of adults' attempts to do right by children, by means both trendy and traditional. Here, teachers (the 'educational visionaries' as well as the more ordinary ones) and parents (present and absent) are shown fundamentally misunderstanding the adolescent world with terrible consequences. As Naoki says from his hospital room: "In the end, adults are only able to evaluate the world of children through adult eyes" (「所詮、大人は大人のまなざしでしか、子供の世界をはかることができないのだ」p. 209).

Confessions is sometimes uneven, which is likely a reflection of the fact that its opening chapters were published as a serial, without the author initially intending to extend the story to novel length. But it certainly gives the thoughtful reader a lot to think about, as well as delivering a nice series of shocks along the way.