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I guess I should chime in here.
I think I laid out my reasoning for nominating this book in that thread and I still think it was a good nomination. I think for me the main downfall is not understanding how much knowledge of Japanese culture, especially turn of the 20th century knowledge, that would be needed for this. Without that knowledge this turns into an incomprehensible story without much plot. I was not able to finish it but I did enjoy what I finished.
That said, and I don't know how much of this is translator and how much is the author, I really did enjoy the prose itself. There were some excellent turns of phrases and the imagery was very good.
I highlighted a bunch of passages but don't have my Kindle available right now to glean from. Overall, the cat's perspective was about right. His attitude at least in the first section seemed to catch the essence of "cat".
The passage about the "dreams" of suicide then the professor's story about getting sick right before his wife's concert was ... disconcerting. I really wish I could understand what the author was trying to say here. I think this passage was the part that lost me for good in this book.
I rarely see translators change names like they did in this book. Obviously their names were picked for their meaning but it was still off putting to me to see them translated like that. Was that the case for anyone else?
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