Sora ni mizuumi

“Recently, I have been looking up at the sky more often.” The author, who lives in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, began writing his “I-novel” three full years after the Great East Japan Earthquake. A middle-aged couple, Hayase and Yuzuko, slowly resume their quiet quotidian routines, immersing themselves in this restoration several times each day as they consider from the vantage of their housing complex veranda the animals and plants they live together with under the same sky. Once this feeling comes upon them as they lie in bed listening to the cries of a hawk- owl. It happens to Yuzuko when she is in the kitchen pickling rakkyō onions and again when she joins a birdwatching excursion. By sharing moments in which they can repeat their activities of the previous year, the two attempt to move forward with their lives.

    They did not suffer directly; their house was not washed away in the tsunami and they were not forced to evacuate by the nuclear accident. The couple, however, still avoids conversation about the disaster with their close neighbors. They do not engage in easy banter about their future hopes. This illustrates how deeply the wounds are buried within Tōhoku people who went through the events of March 11.

    They now cherish the everyday world. The firm belief that this is the only place human happiness can be found is a theme infusing this novel throughout its pages. (OM)