قصة الكتاب :
Bungeishunjū (Bunshun Bunko), 2012. 352 pp. ¥580. ISBN 978-4-
16-784901-6.
Nakajima Kyōko
Born in Tokyo in 1964. After working at a publishing firm and as
a freelance writer, she made her debut as a novelist in 2003 with
Futon. In 2010 her novel Chīsai ouchi won the Naoki Prize. This was
followed by the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature for Tsuma ga
shiitake datta koro [When My Wife Was a Shiitake] in 2014 and
the Kawai Hayao Story Prize and Historical Fiction Writers Club
Award for Katazuno! [One-Horn!] in 2015. Her other works include
Itō no koi [Itō’s Romance] and Chōbō zekka [A Magnificent View].

This novel is the winner of the Naoki Prize for the first half of 2010—Japan’s
best-known and most influential literary award for popular fiction. The story is
set in the early years of the Shōwa era (1926–89), when Japan’s situation is becoming
tenser but the country has not yet fully entered a wartime footing. On the
outskirts of Tokyo, near a station on a private train line, stands a modest Europeanstyle
house with a red, triangular-shaped roof. There a woman named Taki has
worked as a maidservant in the house and lived with its owners, the Hirai family.
Now, near the end of her life, Taki is writing down in a notebook her nostalgic
memories of the time spent living in the house. Her journal captures the refined
middle-class life of the time, from her gentle perspective.
At the end of the novel, however, a startling final chapter is added. The chapter
brings to light, after Taki’s death, a fact not described in her notebook. This
suddenly transforms the world that had been viewed through the lens of a nostalgic
memoir, so that a dramatic, flesh-and-blood story takes shape. The revelation
generates surprise and stirs up deep emotions. Upon finishing the novel, the reader
cannot help feeling dazed for a few moments, thinking back on the time that has
elapsed in the story and the feelings of each of the characters who have appeared.
Nakajima manages to combine skillful dialogue with a dazzling ending. The result
is a polished, masterful work fully deserving of the Naoki Prize. (MT)