قصة الكتاب :
Shinchōsha, 2010. 160 pp. ¥1,300. ISBN 978-4-10-383409-0.
Originally published in Shinchō, Aug. 2010.
Yoshimoto Banana
Born in 1964. Her novel Kitchin [trans. Kitchen] was awarded the
Kaien Prize for New Writers in 1987 and the Izumi Kyōka Prize
for Literature and the Minister of Education Encouragement Prize
for New Artists in 1988. Awarded the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize in
1989 for Tsugumi [trans. Goodbye Tsugumi]. Recipient of numerous
international awards. Translations of Kitchin and other works have
been published in more than 30 countries.

The chance meeting of a lifetime, a gift from God . . . Such an encounter is inevitably
the start of a tale. Once tools like Facebook make it possible to keep tabs
on everybody’s whereabouts, though, romantic chance meetings are unlikely to
happen ever again. In this era, the world needs an author like Yoshimoto Banana.
She writes at depth on the mystery of chance in a small tale, showing us the
importance of its serendipity—how unexpected chance can give us inspiration,
how it can be the strength for us to grasp good fortune.
In this work, two sisters, Donko and Guriko, lose their parents when they are
still children and reach adulthood in an unstable environment. Well acquainted
with heartache, the two take the time outside their regular jobs to start up an
anonymous, free personal website, where they reply to users’ reports of various
troubles. Via email, Guriko takes on the malaises spreading throughout the society
of the day; at the same time, though, she somehow cannot bring herself to
search for her own special someone over the Internet. Somewhere inside she has
the conviction that when the time comes, she will know with absolute certainty.
One day in a seaside town, she meets a person who appears to be the mother
of the man she is looking for. It is then that she learns of his sad fate. Nonetheless,
Guriko quietly persuades herself that this was not just a chance meeting—rather,
her own thoughts, which she had previously sent out, had bounced from person
to person before actually connecting.
This novel teaches us to treasure and maintain the feeling of anonymous
goodwill and shows the importance of imagining what lies behind a meeting that
appears to be by chance. Do our lives become so much more effective just through
prompt information delivered under a real name? This story is essential reading
for modern people, who will want to consider their Facebook-type daily lives, so
hurried that they strip away the empty canvas of chance. (OM)