A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe

And suddenly he felt himself being seized by a disgraceful desire. It had quickened in the darkness of his mind like a clot of black slugs when he had learned at the reception window that his baby was still alive, and gradually had made clear to him its meaning as it propagated with horrid vigor. Bird again dredged the question up to the surface of his conscious mind; how can we spend the rest of our lives, my wife and I, with a monster baby riding on our backs? Somehow I must get away from the monster baby.

Bird is a lecturer at a Japanese "cram-school" who is expecting his first child at any moment. Instead of being with his wife at the hospital, we see him bumming around the city unsure of what to do, failing spectacularly at a strength-measuring game at the local arcade, getting his shit rocked by a group of local youths. (A Personal Matter seems to take place in the 60's, so maybe it was not customary for a husband to be in the delivery room, but still--what a pathetic piece of shit!) He's more interested in his dreams of traveling to Africa than the reality of his wife and child. This reality emerges to shock him when he learns that his son has been born with a massive brain hernia that makes him look if he has two heads, and which the doctor tells him will make him a "vegetable" for his short life, which may only be a couple of days.

Bird is horrified by the baby's appearance and relieved that it will die soon. This deeply shameful feeling--who among us could be sure they would not feel this way? Certainly not me--is one of the subjects of Oe's book, which is admirably unflinching about the dark desires that emerge from beneath the human consciousness. (His sexual desires, which can be both exotic and violent, are another example.) And yet Bird's shame is reflected on all sides: the doctors are more interested in the novelty of the brain hernia than the life Bird's son's might lead or the choices Bird is called on to make. Bird's wife isn't even told about the hernia, only that there is an "organ problem" which has whisked the baby from her arms and into intensive care. Bird's mother-in-law pressures him not to tell her--the baby will die soon anyway and no one needs to know, right? When the baby refuses to die right away, a doctor even conspires with Bird to replace its milk with sugar water so it will waste away sooner.

For most of the novel, Bird is far away from both baby and wife. While both are in the hospital, he spends the week shacked up with an old girlfriend, Himiko, whose husband's unexpected suicide has compelled her to a newfound sexual libertinism of which Bird becomes one of many lucky recipients. Himiko helps Bird to process his shameful feelings and to exorcise his sexual desires, but she also represents a kind of fantasy life, a life Bird might have chosen instead and might still choose. When the sugar water plan fails--the baby seems to be thriving, though with what kind of mental awareness no one can say--he and Himiko hatch a plan to drop the baby off with an abortionist (ex-post facto, I guess) and run off to Africa together.

I was impressed by the complexity and honesty of A Personal Matter. I was interested in the knotty characters of both Bird and Himiko, each navigating the intersection of moral demands and their most fundamental feelings. The central moral question of the novel--what is to be done with the baby?--seems simple, but isn't; the way the needs of the baby may or may not overlap with Bird's desires--what kind of life will it have?--complicates, rather than simplifies things, and the paucity of information that Bird possesses complicates it even further. And Oe, who raised a son under similar circumstances, has special credibility.

"You're right about this being limited to me, it's entirely a personal matter," Bird tells Himiko. "But with some personal experiences that lead you way into a cave all by yourself, you must eventually come to a side tunnel or something that opens on a truth that concerns not just yourself but everyone. And with that kind of experience at least the individual is rewarded for his suffering." In this I hear a distant echo of the baby's situation: what can suffering mean when suffering is done in a locked box of the psyche? We want suffering to be redemptive, but how can the kind of suffering that takes place at such a great remove be redemptive? In the end, Bird makes what we believe is the right choice, but I think Oe suggests the terms of "right and wrong" rely on shaky epistemological grounds.