Oh ! A Mystery of Mono No Aware

Oh! is a hybrid novel, with nonfiction and artwork mixed in. A jaded American, deadened by consumer culture, becomes dangerously obsessed with a group suicide in Japan.
The main storyline follows Zack Hara, a young Japanese American searching for an emotional life while traveling in Japan. Zack finds an ally in a professor and underground poet who introduces him to the concept of mono no aware, roughly translated as the emotive essence of things, or the sadness in beauty. The professor, grieving for a missing daughter, assigns Zack a set of mysterious tasks. Zack?s search for self-discovery turns into a search for the professor?s missing daughter, and draws him into the tragic phenomenon of suicide clubs.
Structured as a thriller with a most unexpected finale, Shimoda?s novel unravels like a Japanese scroll?one cannot put it down until the last scene comes into full view and, with it, the realization that the realm of feelings ( mono no aware ) is far from being an innocent enterprise; it carries risks that one must be ready to pay in order to fully understand. This is a brilliant novel?it makes the reader feel the pleasure of thinking. ??Michael F. Marra, professor of Japanese literature, UCLA.