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Minato Kanae. Confessions. Stephen Snyder, tr. New York. Mulholland Books / Little, Brown. 2014. isbn 9780316200929
Confessions, the debut novel from Minato Kanae (b. 1973), is a sobering indictment of current Japanese society, told in a manner vaguely reminiscent of an epistolary novel through a variety of conceits: a resignation speech, a letter, a diary, a recurring nightmare, a blog, and a phone call. Comprising six "confessions" from five characters, the bleak picture Minato paints of people so deeply mired in their own selfabsorption, so firmly invested in self-worth determined solely by the degree to which others notice them, leaves one despairing of a future for Japan's youth other than total moral decay.
The premise is simple:...