Review - Chiisaki Hanabana (小さき花々) by Yoshiya, Nobuko

Story: The book is a collection of short stories all intending to impart some sort of empathy, wisdom, or other lesson. It strikes a good balance between clearly imparting its message, and not becoming overly predictable or hammering it over you. What really struck me though is the sheer diversity of characters, backgrounds, situations, etc. There’s very heavy incorporation of class issues and prejudices (rich vs poor, city vs rural, etc), and various challenging family troubles (usually economic or health) or other interesting circumstances. Some of the stories have a small touch of the supernatural, and there’s a mix of endings - sad, bittersweet, happy, enabling, etc. Some have the characters having a specific moral realization, and others simply illustrate the different (often tragic) outcomes, due to these differences. The first 4 stories involve 百合っぽい yearning or close bonds between two girls from opposite social classes, but the remaining stories are more familial and societally oriented.

One of the stories, 天国と舞妓 (Heaven and the dancing girl) was actually made into a movie called 花つみ日記 (though it was a poor adaptation). Overall I really enjoyed the book, but found myself learning for either the depth of 花物語 or a longer, novel format, like わすれなぐさ.

Language difficulty: Despite the archaic language, this book is substantially easier than 花物語, so if you’re looking for an introduction into 吉屋信子’s works, it’s probably an accessible place to start. Grammatically & stylistically, it feels around the level of 乙女の港, マリア様がみてる or 本好きの下剋上. The stories are all broken into relatively short subsections as well, which is very great for preventing reading fatigue.