FICTION

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF NIRE by Morio Kita, translated by Dennis Keene (Kodansha International: $16.95). “The Fall of the House of Nire” brings Morio Kita’s saga of the Nire family of Japan to its third generation and the end of the Second World War. Kiichiro Nire established the Nire psychiatric hospitals and the family fortunes. Eccentric and egocentric, he was at the heart of “The House of Nire,” a book much like a folk tale. Kita is a surer, braver writer in this sequel. War itself lends shape to the book. It is more a novel, less a novelty. Kita’s triumph is his self-portrait of Kiichiro’s teen-age grandson, Shuji, a boy trapped in an agony of self-consciousness. Kita has done a Proustian job of remembering. Shuji stands in the bitter cold of the Japanese Alps, where mountains are “ranged . . . in the early dusk like a huge folding screen,” and grasps at the hint that there might be another way of life, a new style of existence, a different form of thought. . . .” That other way of life eludes him. Shuji survives, but fails his examinations, fails to find purpose. His mother thinks him “hopeless.” But we know “Shuji” will become a writer, and tell of these vanquished people and their vanished life.