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‘I’m seventy-six.’
‘My name’s Tokue Yoshii.’
‘Where’ve you been making it for fifty years?
‘My former boss used to run the shop and work here. Now his wife owns it.’
Sentaro was in his fourth year at Doraharu. He worked hard, with no regular day off, but never once had he risen that early to get to work.
The owner was the wife of Sentaro’s former boss,
How can someone who doesn’t like sweet food be running a dorayaki shop?’
‘What?’ ‘Well…I’m in debt. To the owner of this shop. The wife of my late boss.’
Sentaro had been working part-time in a pub after his release from prison when the big man had approached him with this offer.
He had been imprisoned for a direct violation of the Cannabis Control Act.
he ended up staring at the walls for two years.
‘Things will pick up when the rain stops,’ he said, as if reassuring himself. ‘Yes, all we need is a bit of blue sky.’
‘Though I was cured more than forty years ago.’
‘Once you get diagnosed that’s the end of your life. That’s how it used to be with this sickness.’
‘How old were you then, Tokue?’ Sentaro asked. Tokue paused. ‘Fourteen,’
could go home. But more than a dozen years have passed since then and almost no one has come forward to take us back. The world hasn’t changed. It’s just as cruel as it always was.’
One thing I can do in Tenshoen is sniff the wind and listen to the murmur of the trees. I pay attention to the language of things in this world that don’t use words. That’s what I call Listening, and I’ve been doing it for sixty years now.
It’s my belief that everything in this world has its own language. We have the ability to open up our ears and minds to anything and everything. That could be someone walking down the street, or it could be the sunshine or the wind.
‘Listening’ is a good word. I like it.
It’s up to you now – just do what you want. Have confidence in yourself.’
People’s lives never stay the same colour forever. There are times when the colour of life changes completely.
I first entered the sanatorium, then ten years later, twenty years later, thirty years later, and now I’m approaching the end, I can see how different the colour of my days were at each stage.
I realized that no matter how much we lost, or however badly we were treated, the fact is we are still human. All we can do is keep on going with our lives, even if we lose limbs, because this is not a fatal illness. In the midst of darkness and a struggle we had no hope of winning, I held on to this one thing – the fact of our humanity – and I was proud of it.
That’s maybe why I tried to Listen, because I believe that human beings are living creatures with this capability. When I Listened, I sometimes heard things.
Don’t let all that stop you from trying to open your ears to the voices all around you. Listen, and keep listening, for the voices that ordinary people can’t hear, and keep making your dorayaki. I am sure that if you do, the future will open out for both you and Doraharu.
I felt there was no reason to keep a living creature with wings locked inside a cage.
I began to understand that we were born in order to see and listen to the world. And that’s all this world wants of us. It doesn’t matter that I was never a teacher or a member of the workforce, my life had meaning.
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.
Anyone is capable of making a positive contribution to the world through simple observation, irrespective of circumstance. This is the idea that Tokue expresses when she writes in her letter, ‘We were born in order to see and listen to the world.’ It’s a powerful notion, with the potential to subtly reshape our view of everything.
