Michi Ichiho’s Tsumidemic, which won the prestigious Naoki Prize for popular fiction in 2024, collects six disturbing stories about the atmospheric strangeness of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The opening story, Chigau hane no tori, has all the grim fascination of a viral urban legend. A directionless young man moved to Tokyo only to drop out of college. During an eerily quiet night on the town, he randomly meets someone he knew back from middle school. This is a shock, as this woman is supposed to have died years ago. If she didn’t die, then who did…?
The collection takes a more wholesome turn in the fourth story, Tokubetsu enkosha, in which a househusband attempts to weasel himself into the good graces of an elderly man whom he suspects is a money hoarder. The househusband is an affable himbo who has no business scamming anyone, and he ends up becoming a lifesaving connection for the lonely old man.
As indicated by the book’s title, the two themes guiding this collection are “crime” and “the pandemic.” Each of the characters is hiding something, and the reader never knows where anyone’s true intentions lie. The twist at the end of each story is a lot of fun, and the fantastic elements of Ichiho's fiction accurately convey the feeling of just how weird and unreal everything got during the pandemic.
初めて一穂ミチさんの作品を拝見させていただきました。 どの短編集も興味深く、これほどのめり込んで読了したのは久しぶりです。 自分は短編集に出てくる登場人物の思考や境遇などに共感または感じるものがあると思いました。 気に入ってるのが「特別縁故者」であり、最近見た映画「How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies」のストーリーに似ているところがあります。主人公が一人暮らしの老人の家に遺産を求めて料理を振る舞ううちに、老人との絆を深めていき、知らないうちに自分もやりたいことややらなければいけないことに少しずつ気づいていく。みんな自分がやらなければいけないことはなんとなくわかっている。でも、行動に移すかどうかは自分次第。様々な出会いやきっかけが原動力になることもある。
It’s during or slightly after the pandemic. We get to zoom into the lives of a few Japanese people who have gone a bit off the rails- the situations are almost familiar but how the story develops is what you could almost imagine but hope that it doesn’t. Most stories left me feeling sad but some with a grin on my face.