قصة الكتاب :
Shinchōsha (Shinchō Bunko), 2010. 184 pp. ¥362. ISBN 978-4-
10-129671-5.
Okada Toshiki
Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1973. Playwright, theater director,
and novelist. Founded the theater group Chelfitsch in 1997. Received
the Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 2005 for Sangatsu no itsukakan.
He adapted the work into a short story, included together with
“Watashi no basho no fukusū” [My Several Places] in the debut
collection Watashi tachi ni yurusare ta tokubetsu na jikan no owari,
which won the Ōe Kenzaburō Prize in 2008.

The first of the two stories in this book, “Sangatsu no itsukakan” [Five Days in
March], is set in the spring of 2003, when US President George W. Bush announces
a large-scale military operation in Iraq. As the date for action presses, a
young couple spends this “special time” together.
They meet in a live music club in Roppongi, where the American performers
are denouncing Bush. Without either taking the lead, they exit the venue and head
for a love hotel in Shibuya. Then the two of them hole up in the room for five days
as if they have shut themselves in a shelter to block out the news.
The man, a drifting temporary worker, says, “Are we just going to fuck all
through the war? Isn’t that epic? . . . ‘Sex and War’ instead of ‘Love and Peace.’
Or something. I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. But think of it one way,
and well, we’re connected to history.” The woman later recalls, “We didn’t have
windows
or clocks and we didn’t watch TV. The room was like a childhood dream.”
That is the only theme of the story. But why do the two of them spend their
“special time” in this way? Their anxiety may have been shared in some way by all
the young people of the world.
Some may feel that we have reached the end of the potential for truly original
literature. But amid the tendency of Japanese contemporary novels in the 2000s
to fall into such desperation, Okada Toshiki shone like a new beacon. And his
talent in the theatrical world has already started to gain appreciation in Europe
and North America. (OM)