قصة الكتاب :
Bungeishunjū (Bunshun Bunko), 2012. 232 pp. ¥533. ISBN 978-
4-16-783811-9.
Yumoto Kazumi
Born in Tokyo in 1959. Her first novel, Natsu no niwa: The Friends
[trans. The Friends], won newcomer’s prizes from the Japanese Association
of Writers for Children and the Japan Juvenile Writers
Association. Natsu no niwa has been made into a film and stage play,
has been published in translation in over 10 countries, and has won
the Mildred L. Batchelder Award and the Boston Globe−Horn
Book Award.

One day, the first-person narrator of the story is in the kitchen making shiratama
dumplings. Suddenly, there in the semidarkness behind the serving table is her
husband, Yūsuke—he has come back. He has been missing ever since he disappeared
three years previously but has returned to eat her dumplings, which he
loved. Yet Yūsuke says he has been eaten by crabs at the bottom of the sea. And
now he is preparing to go somewhere again.
“Come on, hurry up. It will soon be daybreak.”
The two pack their things and set out. The husband is no longer living but
cannot die without closure. There is something he has to tell his wife, and their
journey retraces the path he has taken to do so. The couple visits a newspaper
delivery shop and a maker of gyōza meat dumplings; they then help out with the
work in a tobacco field in the hills. They are interacting with people who know
the husband, but it is hard to tell whether they are living or dead. However, as the
couple drift along, the people they meet accept them completely naturally. While
going back and forth between this world and the next, the narrator fills in the
blanks of her husband’s three-year absence.
“I wanted to apologize properly,” says Yūsuke, gazing out to sea. As the two
sit together on the shore, a Jacob’s ladder to heaven finally appears. The narrator
tells Yūsuke’s soul that it is time to part, and, carrying both of their bags, once
more starts to walk. This beautifully peaceful tale tells of a present-day descent
into the realm of the dead. (SH)