Sweet Bean Paste

by Durian Sukegawa

Tokue looked vibrant, and not at all as if she were suffering from illness. With her shapely nose and eyes full of life, she resembled the young girl Sentaro had seen in his dream. She was casting a tender smile at the man standing by her side and he was clearly showing his adoration of this radiant young woman.

Sentaro recalled what Tokue had said about making sweet bean paste when she first came to Doraharu. I’ve been making it for fifty years. He remembered it clearly, along with the fleeting glimpse of pride in her face when she spoke.

First, I must apologize for letting Marvy go quite early on, even though I promised to look after him. The more I listened to his chirping, the more I realized he was asking to be let out.

But if I’m really honest, all I ever wanted was to go outside that fence. I wanted to go out into society and work at an ordinary job. I wanted that for the same reasons everyone does – to be a useful member of society and make the world a better place.

I can’t tell you how many times I wished I were dead. Deep down, I believed that a life has no value if a person is not a useful member of society. I was convinced that humans are born in order to be of service to the world and to others. But there came a time when that changed, because I changed.

It doesn’t matter that I was never a teacher or a member of the workforce, my life had meaning.

I was cured at an early stage of the illness and my side effects weren’t bad enough to make it difficult to go outside. You gave me the opportunity to work at Doraharu. I feel truly blessed to have had that experience.

By the same token, my husband spent a great deal of his life fighting illness, and it may have looked as if he had much to be bitter about when he had to depart. But his life too had meaning, because he also sensed the sky and wind.

I’m sure there comes a time for everyone, not just those with Hansen’s disease, when they wonder what the point of life is.

Everything looked so shining and bright. But I started to notice something while I was walking around outside – wherever I went, I knew nobody and had no family. I always felt lost and alone in a strange country.

It was too late. By the time I was told that I could go out into society for the first time in decades and start over, it was much too difficult. If I had become free twenty years earlier I might have managed to start a new life outside. There were many of us like that, in our sixties and seventies, for whom it was too late.

We discovered that once we experienced the joy of being out in the world and free again, the greater the happiness, the more we felt the pain of lost time and lives that could never be returned.

That’s why I made confectionery. I made sweet things for all those who lived with the sadness of loss. And that’s how I was able to live out my life.

Sentaro, your life is meaningful too. The time you suffered behind bars, your finding dorayaki – I believe it all has purpose. All experience adds up to a life lived as only you could. I feel sure the day will come when you can say: this is my life.

You may never become a writer or a master dorayaki cook, but I do believe there will be a time when you can stand tall as yourself in your own unique way.

Then I saw you. I saw your face. Your eyes were so sad. You had a look that made me want to ask what it was that made you suffer so. It was how my eyes used to appear, when I was resigned to being fenced in by that prickly hedge for the rest of my life. That’s what drew me to stand outside your shop.

Then I had a thought. If my husband had not been forcibly sterilized, and I could have had a child, that child would be about the same age as you.

‘Isn’t this lovely, Toku. Wakana brought back the blouse your mother made for you.’ Gently she ran her bent fingers across Wakana’s heaving shoulders, stroking them. ‘Wakana, dear.’ ‘Wakana,’ Sentaro said, his voice choked with tears, ‘thank you.’

‘Toku asked me to join the Confectionery Group after I attempted suicide.’ Miss Moriyama held out her left arm to show them. ‘I cut my wrist, but didn’t do a proper job of it, so I survived.

But if you live in the belief that they can be heard, then someday you might be able to hear them. She said that was the only way for us to live, to be like the poets. That’s what she said. If all you ever see is reality, you just want to die. The only way to get over barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.’