Ghosts

First published in Japan in 1954, this virtually plotless novel seems the essence of shibui , or elegant simplicity. The nameless narrator has a past more truncated than most: when very young he loses first his father, then his mother and finally his only sibling; later, during the war, his possessions,too, are destroyed. Here he records incidents which suddenly activate his earliest memories, the ones that lie ``completely buried . . . uninfluenced by time, as if time stagnated at the deepest level of one's being, or simply turned in circles there.'' He believes that ``every human life is a story . . . the main theme of our being,'' and that the events that seem to bear ``the full weight of meaning'' do so because they ``link up with this story.'' Accordingly, his exploration of memory is fundamental to his notion of identity and fate, and in his tale also, past, present and future seem to turn in circles. The pseudonymous Kita ( The House of Nire ) evokes vast sensory worlds with precise details as well as impressionistic strokes, and his poetic narrative is both an elegy and an act of incarnation. (Feb.)