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Japanese Slavic and East European Studies Vol.38. 2017 BOOK REVIEW Mitsuyoshi Numano, Chekhov — Seventy Percent Despair and Thirty Percent Hope (Tokyo, Kodansha, 2016) A new monograph on Anton Chekhov was published in Tokyo. The author, Mitsuyoshi Numano, is a professor at Tokyo University and is well known as a specialist on emigrant literature, fantastic literature, and contemporary literature. In 2010, he published a new Japanese translation of Chekhov’s short stories in Tokyo that includes “The Darling,” “Zinotchka,” “A Little Joke,” “The House with the Mezzanine,” “The Gigantic Turnip,” “Vanka,” “Oysters,” “Whi- tebrow,” “The Death of a Government Clerk,” “Misery,” “Sleepy,” “Rothschild’s Violin,” and “The Lady with the Dog.” The book divides these 13 stories into four different themes: women, children, death, and love. Numano’s new mon- ograph is based on this translation and discusses these same stories and themes. The strange title of the monograph, Seventy Percent Despair and Thirty Percent Hope, captures the specific character of Chekhov’s work. As Numano describes, Chekhov began his work in the period following the dominance of re- alism in Russian literature in the 19th century. Chekhov could not write a great novel, as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy had. When the system of realism in literature had been deemed broken, Chekhov observed his milieu with both deep despair and a slightest bit of hope. This book consists of 12 chapters. The first chapter, “The Lost Childhood,” discusses the theme of childhood in Chekhov’s work. Anton Chekhov’s own father was strict, and Chekhov did not have any sweet memories from childhood. After the reader is introduced to this fact, the stories “Vanka” and “Sleepy” are discussed and interpreted. The second chapter, “The Cute Soul,” is about the story “The Darling,” as well as Chekhov’s lovers. The third chapter, “Two Lydias,” follows the same theme. Here, it is indicated that Lydia Avilova — who loved Chekhov — imi- tated Chekhov’s story “About Love” in her own life. Chekhov’s fiancée, Evdokia Efros, is introduced in chapter 4, titled “Chek- hov and the Jewish Question.” Efros was a Jewish woman; thus, she could not marry Chekhov. This chapter discusses not only this sad truth, but also the story “Rothschild’s Violin,” which is about a Jew. 93 BOOK REVIEW In chapter 5, “Insanity and Prison,” the author explains the tradition of the theme of madness in Russian literature, from Pushkin to Garshin. Chekhov’s short story “Ward No. 6” is also discussed here. Chapter 6, “A Small Zoo,” is about the theme of animals in Chekhov’s stories. In this chapter, the author refers to zoos in Moscow and St. Petersburg — which were opened in the second half of the 19th century — and analyzes Chekhov’s stories about dogs, “Kashtanka” and “Whitebrow.” In chapter 7, “In the Country Enriched with Spirituality,” religiousness and occultism in 19th-century Russian literature are described, and the short stories “The Bishop” and “The Black Monk” are discussed and analyzed. In chapter 8, “Revolutionary Women,” the author introduces Russian female revolutionaries, referring to the story “The House with the Mezzanine.” In chapter 9, “Tragedy or Comedy,” the author claims that Chekov’s com- edies are forerunners of the theme of absurdity that developed later in Russian avant-garde theater. Chekov’s travel to Sakhalin Island is reexamined in chapter 10, “To Sakha- lin,” in which the author concludes that Sakhalin Island, a place of exile, existed outside the Russian imagination . The final two chapters — “History of the Disease” and “I’m Dying” — con- cern the writer’s death. Chapter 11 describes how Chekhov hesitated to seek treatment for tuberculous, and chapter 12 deconstructs the romantic image of Chekhov’s death, when the dying author drank a glass of champagne and muttered in German, “Ich sterbe” (I’m dying). According to Numano, cham- pagne might have been used as a cardiotonic, rather than for comfort. This book is based on historicism; it is not a biography of the writer. It nei- ther traces the development of Chekhov’s texts, nor analyzes them closely. The author refers, instead, to the society in which Chekhov lived and pays attention to the circumstances around him: the lives of women, occultism, anthroposophy, the Dreyfus affair, psychiatric hospitals, and zoos. Chekhov’s texts are interpreted in a social context. In the 21st century, Japanese Slavists tend to understand literary texts in their social contexts. For example, Ikuo Kameyama interprets Dostoevsky’s novels in the context of the revolutionary movement in 19th-century Russia, and Tokiko Ono studies Gogol while referring to the Russian publishing culture. In his stories and plays, Chekhov discussed the common themes of happi- ness and the meaning of life; therefore, his readers tend to ignore the historical 94 BOOK REVIEW circumstances of his work and modernize the meanings of the texts. Numano’s historical approach helps readers understand Chekhov’s texts by thinking about Chekhov’s milieu. With his detailed descriptions of 19th-century Russian society, the abstract protagonists of Chekhov’s works are placed within concrete images, living in his time period’s social reality. However, this book is about Chekhov specifically, rather than the historical moment in which he lived and worked. Thus, the book does not provide any models of historical changes, and it does not involve any theories of history. The historical facts presented in the book do not relate to each other at all, thus, providing a chaotic impression for the reader. It seems to be a paradox that the universality of Chekhov’s texts becomes obvious after reading this historical approach. The more detail with which the author describes Chekhov’s relationships with women, the more obvious it be- comes that Chekhov’s stories are independent of the writer’s own life. As indi- cated in this book, many scholars have sought out the real models of Chekhov’s stories—such as Lydia Avilova, whose own life imitates the stories; however, fictional stories are independent of real lives. Numano shows Chekhov’s detach- ment from his works and life. When Tolstoy praised “The Darling,” Chekhov was confused. The writer’s isolation and works become remarkable through Numano’s descriptions of his stories. Consequently, we can say that the historicism of this book is not completely effective. Though readers do get concrete image of Chekhov through this book, many questions are left unanswered. Why did he go to Sakhalin? Why did he ignore his disease? What made him write these extremely unique stories? Nonetheless, this book is unique for Japanese readers, and it invites us to closely read the work of this important author. Kazuhisa Iwamoto (Sapporo University) Demography of Russia: From the Past to the Present by Tatiana Karab- chuk, Kazuhiro Kumo, and Ekaterina Selezneva, London, Palgrave Mac- millan, 2017. This is a comprehensive study of the demographic problems of imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation. Three researchers from Japan and Russia dealt with birth, marriage, divorce, death, and inter-regional 95.

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