A True Novel by Minae Mizumura

Author:Minae Mizumura [Mizumura, Minae]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2013-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

LATE IN THE year, the nephew and his family arrived. A wooden fence separated the Utagawa home from the two rentals, but the fence only extended as far as the well they all shared, so that both the landlord’s and tenants’ families could have easy access. This meant that from certain places in the Utagawas’ back yard one had an unobstructed view of Roku’s narrow veranda and front door.

That day, I was sweeping up fallen leaves in the yard when I happened to glance over at Roku’s house. What I saw made me grip the bamboo handle of my broom tight: people who looked like beggars, dirty, in rags.

More than a decade had passed since the war ended. “The postwar period is behind us” was the year’s slogan, and indeed the raw and painful memories of the days immediately after the war had mostly faded. But on that day, on Roku’s doorstep, they all came back like returning ghosts.

Roku’s nephew and his wife were each carrying large bundles in both hands and had filthy loads wrapped in ropes that crisscrossed their chests and shoulders. Roku had told us that the nephew was in his thirties, but to me he looked over fifty. They had three boys with them, all of whom had the same grimy cloth-and-rope things weighing down their shoulders. The older two appeared to be of middle school age, while the youngest was still quite small. All three of them had light reddish-brown hair, a clear sign of malnourishment. The youngest stood apart from the rest, as though to show he wasn’t one of them. They were all hollow-eyed from hunger, but his eyes had a hollowness beyond hunger, a blankness, like a pair of glass beads.

That little one was Taro.

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