قصة الكتاب :
Shinchōsha, 2013. 169 pp. ¥1,400. ISBN 978-4-10-445609-3.
Gen’yū Sōkyū
Born in Fukushima Prefecture in 1956. After working various jobs,
he entered the Zen monastery of Tenryūji Temple in Kyoto. Currently,
is the chief priest at Fukujūji Temple in Fukushima Prefecture.
Received the Akutagawa Prize in 2001 for “Chūin no hana” [Flowers
in Limbo]. His other works include the novels Rīra: Kami no
niwa no yūgi [Lila: At Play in the Garden of the Gods] and Teruchan
[Little Teru], in addition to many essays and interviews concerning
Buddhism and Zen.

When disaster struck on March 11, 2011, the Akutagawa Prize–winning author
was the chief priest at the temple of Fukujūji in his hometown of Miharu, Fukushima
Prefecture, which is within a 50-kilometer radius of the Fukushima Daiichi
Nuclear Power Plant. Soon after the earthquake, he was tapped for the Reconstruction
Design Council in Response to the Great East Japan Earthquake, and
he has been conducting lectures and other activities around the country since then.
“As heartless as it may sound,” he says, “I couldn’t live without writing novels,
just like we continue to breathe the air regardless of radiation levels.” This collection
of six stories—which were born from that experience and which faithfully reflect
the changing situation over the two years since that fateful day—captures the truth
of the people living in the disaster area of Fukushima more vividly than any image
or news report. It allows us to see the full scope of the tragedy of this disaster.
The figures who appear here include the young girl who has been too scared
to drink the tea in her teacup since losing her parents in the tsunami. The mother
carrying her infant as she looks for the body of her missing husband, and the
government official at the morgue who helps them while dealing with the loss of
his own daughter and grandchild. The young wife whose fear of radiation drives
her to flee to Hokkaidō and to divorce her husband, who has chosen to live in a
shelter, and their old friends—a husband and wife—who continue to live in Fukushima
while harboring mixed feelings toward the woman.
Needless to say, this work is about more than just these individual stories of
misfortune. What did the disaster actually take away from these people, and can
they ever recover what they lost? How should they go on living? And what is the
meaning of a human life? The stories here thrust pointed questions at the reader,
but a benevolent light somehow manages to shine through. Surely this is a testament
to the priestly virtue of the author and the inner beauty that lives on in the
hearts of people in Japan’s northeastern Tōhoku region. (OM)