A Quiet Place

What is a marriage really? - A Quiet Place dissects this very question throughout its pages. Set in Post-War Japan, this piece traverses the inner workings of Japan's civil service through the eyes of a middle ranking civil servant Tsuneo Asai. Asai is what you could recognise by modern standards, as your archetypal Japanese salary man: hardworking, disciplined, highly respected, resourceful, loyal but intertwined with a tinge of rueful pride, great ambitions, and a distaste for the nepotism which is rife within his profession.  It is this pride which, for the entirety of this novel, forms perhaps the strongest of Asai's relationships. 

This effective marriage to his job is then challenged, by the sudden and unexpected death of his junior second wife Eiko, whilst Asai is away on a work trip; an unwelcomed intrusion into Asai's work life. One aspect which is telling of the separation between each of Asai's worlds; his home and his work, is that he barely refers to his first wife, and as the story progresses, he clearly did not make reference to his second wife in life. 

After Eiko's death, Asai (now a double widow) begins to question the previously solid divisions between the different vestiges of his life. The marriage between the two, in life, was passionless, and perhaps one forged out of social expectation. The two had lived seemingly separate lives, apart from the meals they had shared together. Nevertheless, absence makes the heart fonder, and in this respect Asai falls victim to an unexpected level of grief and love for his late wife. 

Irregularities soon arise concerning the nature of his wife's death. Questions remain unanswered, and little by little, the lingering feelings which highlighted his second marriage, begin to seep into his relationship with work. 

The novel then progresses as Asai, conflicted by feelings of the past, sets out to solve the mystery surrounding his wife's death. He soon finds himself embroiled into the sordid conspiracy behind his wife's passing. 

A Quiet Place challenges how far we should go for our relationships, both personal (such as marriage) and our professional ones. Who deserves our loyalty? How do we maintain the loyalty we give to others and to ourselves? Asai's crisis is further correlated with changing attitudes and practices of Japanese society through themes of technological advances and western influences. 

Asai's most prevalent marriage is to him in this novel; to the image he has cultivated of himself and the one he presents to others. A Quiet Place is a story (with the help of many interesting twists and turns) of the needlessly messy divorce of Asai from himself. Chapter by chapter, we see a man worn down by the actions of others and in time, himself. To draw a western comparison, A Quiet Place at times feels like a Columbo story, where a killer, no matter how smart or ruthless is drawn by their own weaknesses, to their doom. 

A Quiet Place
by Seicho Matsumoto 
ISBN: 9780241744208 

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