قصة الكتاب :
Shinchōsha, 2011. 132 pp. ¥1,200. ISBN 978-4-10-306073-4.
Furukawa Hideo
Born in Fukushima Prefecture in 1966. Received the Mishima Yukio
Prize in 2006 for Love. In 2008, published the epic novel Seikazoku.
Released the recitation CD Shisei/shisei: Nihon kingendai meishi sen
[Poetic Masters/Poetic Voices: Selected Famous Modern and Contemporary
Japanese Poems] in 2007, and the recitation DVD Seikazoku:
voice edition [The Holy Family: Voice Edition] in 2010. His
other works include Beruka, hoenai no ka? [trans. Belka, Why Don’t
You Bark?] and Doggu mazā [Dog Mother].

This novella, by Furukawa Hideo, has attracted attention as one of the first real
responses by a Japanese novelist to the Great East Japan Earthquake of March
11, 2011, and the nuclear power plant accident it brought about in Fukushima.
The author was born in the city of Kōriyama, not far from the Fukushima Daiichi
Nuclear Power Plant. As you might expect, he was worried about what happened
to his hometown. So, in early April 2011, he and some of his editors visited the
areas of Fukushima Prefecture around the nuclear power plant, as though driven
by a “suicidal impulse.” This work—a kind of travel narrative that records his experiences
on that trip—is written in complex, not linear, ways. Time gets distorted
and moves back and forth, as if drawn into an “otherworldly dimension” after the
catastrophe.
Before long, the fictional main character from Furukawa’s earlier epic Seikazoku
[The Holy Family]—a sprawling novel set in the six prefectures of Japan’s northeastern
Tōhoku region—appears and joins Furukawa’s group in their car, spinning
out a new “tale.” Meanwhile, the author leaves Japan during a long vacation to
participate in a gala literary event in New York City. While gazing at the World
Trade Center site, he superimposes the events of 9/11 onto those of 3/11. Furthermore,
scenes from contemporary Fukushima following the nuclear power plant
accident are overlapped with beautiful images from the long-standing tradition
known as the Sōma nomaoi, or “wild horse chase,” a military exercise in which
wild horses are captured and offered to a Shintō shrine. This kind of style was
probably the only way to write a realistic account of the chaotic situation after the
earthquake. (NM)