Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa

Author:Durian Sukegawa
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781786071965
Publisher: Oneworld Publications

18

The three set out on the road through the grounds, with Sentaro carrying Marvy’s cage. Away from the shop, the quietness returned.

‘For treatment – such as it was – we didn’t have drugs like Promin at first.’

Promin: this was the name of the drug used for treating Hansen’s disease. Sentaro and Wakana both knew from their reading on the internet the change it brought about in ending a long history of suffering.

‘But that medicine helped cure you, didn’t it?’ Wakana asked, standing close by Tokue’s side.

‘We’d all heard about it, and how incredibly effective it was. But it wasn’t getting to Japan. That’s why we patients banded together to get action, and started a campaign to let us have access to Promin. There were protests in every sanatorium. Any earlier and we would have been thrown in detention cells for that.

‘Detention cells? You had that kind of thing? I—’ Sentaro broke off in confusion before he could let slip anything about his own experience of cells.

‘The Kusatsu sanatorium had a solitary cell. Every sanatorium had detention cells, but if anyone got sent to isolation in Kusatsu there was little chance of coming back alive. People were locked up for months at a time in a pitch-black room with no sun. In winter it was sealed off by snow and they’d freeze to death.’

Wakana’s face registered shock.

‘People go crazy in the dark and die,’ Tokue said gently. ‘People from here got sent to detention in Kusatsu, too, for starting a strike, and died there.’

What must Tokue have seen here as a young girl, Sentaro wondered, with thoughts of his own time behind bars. What must she have gone through?

‘If I hadn’t gotten sick, though, I wouldn’t have given another thought to what happened to people with this disease. When I was little I saw tramps taken away on police trucks because they were suspected of having leprosy. Public-health workers came and squirted them down mercilessly with white powder while they crouched down in the back. Because I’d seen that kind of thing, I was scared of lepers. For a long time after I came here, it was unbearable to have to see them every day. Even if I was one.’

Sentaro wanted to say something sympathetic, but words failed him.

‘The ones that got brought here after their illness was far gone had symptoms all over their bodies,’ Tokue continued in a subdued tone. ‘There were people with nodules, big lumps and scabs – that’s the kind of thing this illness does to you. Some had their fingers fall off, others their nose. It wasn’t an unusual sight before the medicine became available. It was dreadful seeing people suffering like that, knowing that’s what would happen to me eventually. I was terrified.’

Tokue stopped walking. They had reached a lone small hillock that looked almost man-made. Late-autumn grass blooms dotted the slope among the trees and shrubs.

‘We all longed for home. This is where we came when we felt homesick.’ Tokue pointed to steps cut into the earth and leading up the slope.

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