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The other stories this lawyer related were surprising, involving as they did a number of moving incidents about which Kido-san himself had never spoken, and I finally came to understand in full living color this unmistakably isolated and lonely middle-aged man. It might sound trite, but he was, after all, a real character.
The other stories this lawyer related were surprising, involving as they did a number of moving incidents about which Kido-san himself had never spoken, and I finally came to understand in full living color this unmistakably isolated and lonely middle-aged man. It might sound trite, but he was, after all, a real character.
With all the unique characters that make an appearance, some of you might wonder why on earth I didn’t pick one of the bit players to be the protagonist. While Kido-san will in fact become obsessed with the life of a man, it is in Kido-san, viewed from behind as he chases this man, that I sensed something that needed to be seen.
With all the unique characters that make an appearance, some of you might wonder why on earth I didn’t pick one of the bit players to be the protagonist. While Kido-san will in fact become obsessed with the life of a man, it is in Kido-san, viewed from behind as he chases this man, that I sensed something that needed to be seen.
And perhaps the reader will spot the central theme of this work in the back of me, the artist, obsessing over Kido-san absorbed in his own obsession.
And perhaps the reader will spot the central theme of this work in the back of me, the artist, obsessing over Kido-san absorbed in his own obsession.
I would like to write about a woman named Rié. For you see, the bewilderingly strange and tragic ordeals that she underwent are where everything in this tale finds its origin.
I would like to write about a woman named Rié. For you see, the bewilderingly strange and tragic ordeals that she underwent are where everything in this tale finds its origin.
mid-September 2011
mid-September 2011
2011 with the Great East Japan Earthquake,
2011 with the Great East Japan Earthquake,
Misfortune can visit itself upon anyone. But when it comes to serious misfortune, we have a tendency to presume that, if it happens at all, it can only happen once in a lifetime.
Misfortune can visit itself upon anyone. But when it comes to serious misfortune, we have a tendency to presume that, if it happens at all, it can only happen once in a lifetime.
It is in the midst of such recurrent misfortune that people visit shrines for purification ceremonies or have their names changed. Including Daisuké, Rié lost three of the people she most loved one after the next.
It is in the midst of such recurrent misfortune that people visit shrines for purification ceremonies or have their names changed. Including Daisuké, Rié lost three of the people she most loved one after the next.
Rié had no faith in any particular religion. Her family were so-called “funeral Buddhists,” belonging to the Jodo sect only insofar as they employed its funerary services.
Rié had no faith in any particular religion. Her family were so-called “funeral Buddhists,” belonging to the Jodo sect only insofar as they employed its funerary services.
“Oh boy. I really don’t get it . . . What? This guy went around using my brother’s name? Um, it was Daisuké Taniguchi, right?”
I’m not saying he’s changed or anything like that. This guy is someone else entirely.” “This isn’t Daisuké? Wait, you are his elder brother, Kyoichi Taniguchi, aren’t you?” “That’s me.” They were silent for a time.
Despite her confusion, Rié felt insulted when Kyoichi let out a laugh, as though mocking her and Daisuké’s marriage. She was getting creeped out, less due to doubts about Daisuké than worries about who this man in their house was supposed to be.
Kyoichi studied page after page of photos in which the man who had claimed to be Daisuké appeared alongside Rié, Yuto, and Hana,
I hate to say it, but this creep had you fooled. Because that is not my brother. Somebody was impersonating Daisuké.”
He and the other lawyers had been talking about middle-aged depression, which was becoming increasingly common around them, as it was in society more generally.
Kido had made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that they begin to “gather evidence” to prove to themselves that they were not terrible people as insurance against such an eventuality.
That is, someone had masqueraded as “Daisuké Taniguchi,” lived in matrimony with Rié, and even fathered a child with her. What’s more, “Daisuké Taniguchi” was apparently not a made-up name but a person, according to census information listed on his family register, who actually existed.
What on earth could this all be about? Kido was still trying to work out how he might contribute to the situation as a lawyer.
He loved dearly the angle he took when he was getting drunk on vodka. As though diving with no oxygen tank, he sunk in a straight line, heading toward the abyss of inebriation. His path along the way was transparent, words could never catch up with him, and even the flavor was like light sparkling on the distant surface of the water when he looked back.
one is able to love someone in the present thanks to the past that made them the way they are.
people are incapable of telling others their entire past, and regardless of their intentions, the past explained in words is not the past itself. If the past someone told diverged from the true past, would the love for that person be mistaken somehow?
Rié’s husband had been a different man who had merely impersonated Daisuké
Taniguchi. In keeping with the practices of his profession, he decided for the time being to call him X.
To throw away everything and become someone else—imagining doing
this undeniably aroused in Kido a certain beguiling excitation.
Aggravating this discomfort were reports the previous summer of Japan’s rising nationalism and xenophobic far-right demonstrations provoked by the landing of President Lee Myung-bak on the disputed island of Takeshima. Such developments forced Kido to acknowledge that there were some people in the country he lived in that he did not wish to meet and some places that he did not wish to visit.
In the past, he had always shrugged off the occasional intolerant sentiments expressed by those around him as some kind of mistake. Now he almost wished he could still be so blithe.
The case involved a bachelor who worked as a cook at a Chinese restaurant in Osaka. After being invited to a supposed
job interview, he was kidnapped from Miyazaki to North Korea. A spy who had perfectly adopted the man’s past and career then came to Japan in order to masquerade as him. It seems that he was active for several years, acquiring a driver’s license, a health insurance card, and so on, though he was eventually apprehended upon visiting South Korea.”
As Kido leaned forward speaking confidentially to Misuzu, he suddenly became aware of a psychological passageway connecting him and X. It had been opened by their commonality, namely, the respective circumstances that led others to question their Japanese identity.
“This song is always too much for me,” Misuzu explained, shaking her head as she wiped her eyes, smiling. “I’m turning into such a crybaby as I get older.”
“I only know Joe Cocker’s schmaltzy version,” he said. “Is this the original?”
Misuzu gazed at the picture of Daisuké Taniguchi that she’d brought and then at the picture of X again. Strangely, Kido suddenly felt like he’d seen X’s face somewhere before. But as he was somewhat drunk, he let the hint of a memory slip away.
With nowhere else to turn, Rié soon hit upon the idea of consulting with Kido. This was not merely because she trusted him as a lawyer.
Rié found this explanation flabbergasting, but she was relieved to have someone sensible with whom she could discuss her predicament and raised a worry that she never would have mentioned to the police. “Could my husband have been . . . involved in some kind of crime?”
A life is something that you can exchange with someone else—Rié would never have dreamed such a thing if her husband hadn’t demonstrated it was true. He had actually led the life of another. But what about death? Death, she felt certain, was the only thing you could never exchange with anyone.
Facing his photo, Rié always stared into his eyes and wished there was a name by which she could call him. Could
mendacious sincerity, consummately performed, be the ultimate deception?
As was typical of someone in middle age, Kido saw his life as composed of several stages linked together by a shared name, with himself as their culmination. A significant portion of the life given continuity by the label “Akira Kido” that had once lain ahead had already been relegated to the past, and so his identity was in large part already determined.
The problem now was not who he
was in the present but who he’d been in the past, and the solution he sought was no longer supposed to help him live but to help him figure out what sort of person to die as.
