A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe is one of two Japanese books I checked out after I read Kokoro. This story is about a man named Bird who is the father to a newborn baby who has a major birth defect. The story is about the father's reaction and dealing (or not dealing) with the issue. To be honest, about thirty pages into the story, I hated the main character and wanted to put the book down immediately. It depressed me so much that I didn't even want to pick up another book.

For some inexplicable reason, I decided to stick with it and I am glad I did. While this book was much more modern than Kokoro, it also was character based and full of ideas, morals and issues surrounding making difficult and immoral decisions. The book finally redeemed itself to me in its final pages and at the end I felt better about reading it.