Toraware, by Robert W. Norris. Touka Shobo. 324 pages.

By Peter Crookes, Staff Writer,Copyright (c) 1998 Peter Crookes

Sanity is a matter of appearances in Japan. If you manage to provide the image of normalcy expected of a person from your strata of society, you need not fear impending incarceration in the funny farm. Unless of course you derive pleasure from the belief that the world is plotting to get you, in which case just keep it behind closed doors and nobody else will mind.

The idea of outwardly normal people oscillating between periods of seeming mental calm and others where they verge on having their characters shatter is what preoccupies Robert Norris in his intriguing "Toraware." His main characters are for the most part not so much fractured personalities as psyches on artificial respiration. Apart from wondering where their mental faculties are going, these people devote the bulk of their energies to looking for true love, or at least a decent substitute.

His key protagonists are Harlan, an American who--shock! horror!--has drifted into teaching English in Japan, and Yoshiko, a one-time suicidal Japanese woman stumbling through life without much idea of where she is going and who soon becomes Harlan's lover.

Norris only gradually peels away the levels of Harlan's psychological problems. Initially he comes across as merely selfish and somewhat cold. He is happy to use Yoshiko for sexual gratification but doesn't worry too much about whether she is in his life or not. Harlan is a 33-year-old Vietnam War veteran and, consciously or not, has been running from his wartime experiences ever since. A period in India, where he became part of the impoverished masses in Calcutta, did nothing to heal the wounds. Norris makes only brief and vague references to what happened to Harlan during the war but evidently he had the impermanence of life etched into his soul. The existence of a higher being, especially a benevolent one, was taken out of his emotional resume. The effect is particular in that Harlan is at times obsessive about death yet is all but devoid of spirituality. Not knowing where he is going--nor caring too much--Harlan is, however, definite about not wanting any serious relationships to tie him down.

Unconsciously, he finds himself establishing ties in Japan. He finds a good job, which he contemplates making into a career, and becomes a part of the Kobe-Osaka community through his playing for a local softball team.

Most importantly, he finds Yoshiko, a 23-year-old rebel without a clue. She fights against the bonds of her well-off family and tries to recapture the spiritual peace she found during a stay in Canada. Instead, gripped in the throes of hating Japan, she lapses into her old ways of binge drinking and promiscuity. Yoshiko keeps only tenuous control over her raw and powerful emotions. She thinks Harlan could be the rock she needs in her life but is frustrated in her efforts to get him to open his heart.

The artistic and repressed Sachiko is the third member of the convoluted, but not entirely consummated, love triangle. At 22 she remains a virgin and fancies Harlan as the man to induct her into womanhood. One half-hearted effort aside, though, he has no interest in helping with that aspect of her education, although he unwittingly encourages her infatuation.

Norris spends much of the novel inside the messy environs of his characters' heads and one wonders how they survived this long. The early problems they suffer only snowball as Harlan and Yoshiko see-saw between love and near-hatred for each other with Sachiko getting caught in the cross fire. The occasional dream sequences are unnerving and it is instructing how these people continue to parade the facade of normality while the seams come apart.

Moreover, Norris shows the benefit of his own experience in Japan in using the character of Harlan to consider the lot of foreigners in Japan. The drifter passes through the not unheard of phases of apathy, wonder and alienation.

The exploration of psychological fraying is absorbing, the near-constant references to the passing of the seasons as Norris traces the three lives during the period of 1983-86 are less so. The initial couple of descriptions of cherry blossoms in the spring, leaden skies and icy breezes of winter, et cetera, are interesting, their reruns slide into the territory of tedium.

A few slips aside, Norris holds the reader from the opening page. He does not spare his characters the thorns of barren dreams and so makes them more believable. More importantly in a story devoid of action, the characters' psychic contortions give the tale its drama.

Unfortunately, Norris seems at a loss as to how to say adieu to his creations. He jumps to the time of the Great Hanshin Earthquake for an unconvincing finish that smacks of feeling sorry for having put them through too much in the preceding pages. Equally, sometime before the end he largely dispenses with Sachiko. It is a pity, for of all the characters she had the most potential for change and was the most likeable.

The line between eccentricity and losing your marbles is a fine one. As Norris tellingly shows, often it is just a matter of luck as to which side of the line you exist on.

(Mainichi Daily News, April 11,1998 -- reprinted by permission)