The simplicity of Connections: a review of A Hundred Years and a Day by Tomoka Shibasaki, translated by Polly Barton
Written by Joseph Edwin Haeger
In one of the first stories in Tomoka Shibasaki’s fantastic story collection A Hundred Years and a Day it’s stated simply: “I guess there’s no shortage of strange folk in this world.” This gives us a hint of what’s to come — that strangeness and idiosyncrasies can be found anywhere in our everyday lives.
In the first story, we follow two girls who discover a surprise patch of mushrooms after a big rainstorm. While they’re looking at the mushrooms, they see a little creature jump up and run away. Was this an alien or a cryptid? We don’t really know, and we don’t ever find out. The style of Shibasaki’s writing is dry and matter of fact, similar to Murakami. I think opening with this particular story runs the risk of setting the book up for failure though because outside this story, there aren’t a lot of speculative or surreal moments. I saw another reviewer give this book a poor score because it wasn’t akin to Murakami. I don’t think this is fair because there was no way for A Hundred Years and a Day to succeed in this person’s head. The moment it deviated from their expectations the charm was going to wear off quickly. So, as a warning: no, these stories aren’t fantastical in nature, but they do have that direct approach to storytelling.
The titles of the stories in this collection are less titles and more synopses. Here are a few examples:
The tobacco shop on the corner was draped in wisteria that burst into glorious blossom every spring; upon close inspection, it became clear that this wisteria was actually two wisteria plans that had grown intertwined; these days nobody remembered that one of them had been found on the street years before
Back when there was a fountain in the station concourse, a man known as Hoody would spend all day sitting beside it; one day a woman he’d never met approached him and stared yelling at him
In an international airport were some female students waiting for their flight to begin boarding, a married couple with a baby, and a woman who had once been seen off there by her father; before it became an international airport, a man flew a plan from there
The other thing worth pointing out is most of these stories are under ten pages. Some of them span only three or four pages. They cut so close to the bone that there aren’t any wasted words or scenes. Sometimes this can make them feel a little dry, but I think that’s the whole point of the book. We’re meant to be passive observers to these different interactions, which sometime span numerous characters and/or years of time. That’s what’s so intriguing about this book — it’s less about the characters and more about how time and space connect us to one another. That’s why the titles worked so well for me; they took away the surprise of the plot and let me focus on where the character fit into the world.
My favorite story in the collection is about a novelist who was gifted a picture of her alleged father as a young boy. The photo was taken in the small town where he grew up and the name of the town was written on the back. The author, unsure of what to do with the picture, simply stowed it away in her desk. Then, years later, after her death, the novelist’s daughter finds the picture and visits the town without realizing it’s her grandfather in the photo. Here, she meets a little boy who claims to be the last kid in town, telling her that after he grows up and graduates, they’re going to shut down the school. We then follow this kid as he moves away to a new town. During an art’s festival, he discovers a scaled down, replica town that looks a lot like the small village he grew up in. Woooof. Does that sound like a lot? Because it is, but Shibasaki tells this entire story in nine pages and absolutely rocks it. It’s not confusing as it flows from one moment to the next. And what’s so delightfully surprising about it, is at certain points you think it’s about one thing, but then that changes, and then that changes, and at the end, you realize it was about all those things and none of those things at the same time. It feels atypical and surreal and obscure in only the ways real life can. By extension, this story is a good reflection of the collection as a whole.
A Hundred Years and a Day is a book about time, place, and connection. It’s told in these objective, simple stories where we’re expected to deconstruct the narrative. They sometimes end abruptly and at other times feel like there’s no deeper meaning, and I think that’s where our active role needs to take the wheel. Yes, there is a passive quality to these stories, but it’s on us to more or less pick up that next step once we finish the story. They’re meant to percolate and simmer, living on a little longer in our brains after we’ve read them. It’s tempting to leave them half-thought of, but it’s far more rewarding to put in the work to unlock the magic of all 34 tales.
A Hundred Years and a Day: 34 Stories
By Tomoka Shibasaki, trns. Polly Barton
Published by MONKEY (Stone Bridge Press)
208pgs
Paperback: 979-8988688730 | February 2025 | $18.95
Joseph Edwin Haeger is the author of the experimental memoir Learn to Swim (University of Hell Press, 2015) and the novella, Bardo (Thirty West Publishing, 2023.) He writes fiction, essays, poetry, and screenplays. As a litmus test, he tells people his favorite movie is Face/Off, but there’s a part of him that’s afraid it’s true. He lives in the Inland PNW.