I held this image, the only trace of my mother’s last project, taken during our final summer in Shimoda, and I tried to remember being there with her. I could feel the breeze cool on my face, the cold shock of the water, the slip of my sandals on seaweed as I climbed among the rocks. Perhaps there had been a trip to a harbour to see the yachts, the sound of my feet on the concrete as I ran and ran, and later, a cone of ice cream and strong arms lifting me into the air for a photograph beneath the sun.
What I realised is that I am all that is left. All of these storeys, photographs and facts reside within me. There are tangible things that remain: the stub of her plane ticket to Hokkaido, her shoes, her packets of scent, his letters. These things tell the story of a life, of many lives intertwined, but I am the point at which they meet.
On the tarmac in Hokkaido in the glow of the dawn, I stared out of the aeroplane window, waiting. The engines vibrated as the stewardesses shut the lockers overhead. I bit my lip, impatient, longing for that moment when the plane would taxi down the runway, for the punch of acceleration in my back as we were propelled into the air with no turning back, only flight or destruction.
I knew that I would keep Kaitarō’s letters, with the imprint of his pen clear on the paper, and I would not burn them. I could not. I would always be connected to my mother and her lover, but the rest was up to me. As Sartre, whose writing my grandfather introduced me to, once said, Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you. I had to build a future for myself, a life.
As the plane finally rose into the air, I looked down to see the airport and then Sapporo shrinking beneath us. Soon we were gliding away from Hokkaido’s volcanoes and lakes and its long stretches of isolated coast. We skirted the edge of Uchiura Bay and crossed the Tsugaru Strait and the churning blue sea. Leaving the white-capped water behind, we returned to the island of Honshu, gliding over the forests of Aomori and mountain ranges so steep that any town or city was like a pocket of civilisation that had settled in the cracks.
The land flattened as we crossed Fukushima and the golden rice fields of Tochigi, stretching out into a kaleidoscope of colour from the green swathes of woods to the burnt ochre of harvested soil and the patchwork of crops still ripening in the sun. For a long stretch there was the silver glint of industrial greenhouses where tomatoes and cucumbers were grown, interspersed here and there with blue tiled roofs and dusty provincial tracks, small settlements that nestled on the banks of rivers. But as we crossed the plains, the villages grew once more into towns, the towns into cities, finally evolving into the great sprawling metropolis that was my home.
I felt the plane shift and tilt. I saw the wing tip arc against the sun, and beneath it the land flowed out before me, the edges of Tokyo blending and spreading into Chiba. One concrete expanse melting into another, a forest of steel and glass and progress.
I looked down and tried to find the train line I had taken only a few weeks before, following it in my mind’s eye to the station and the great red-brick edifice of Chiba Prison. I could almost see the guard outside with his morning Styrofoam cup of coffee directing visitors to the car park, handing out forms, and in the town and schools beyond the complex, people going about their business. I glanced at my watch, noting the time and particularly the date. Only a few hours more and a new member of the public would walk out through those tinted-glass doors, for it was the final day of his sentence and soon Kaitarō Nakamura would be free.
Since meeting him I had often thought about what he would do once released. In the tapes he had claimed that he did not want to live without my mother, so I wondered if he would end his life. Would he drive out into the countryside to a ghostly stretch of Suicide Forest and lie down to die? I did not think so. I thought that like me he would live with my mother’s memory. He would live with what he had done.
The plane turned towards Haneda, and as I looked outside, searching for the airport in the distance, my whole view was filled with Tokyo. Gazing down at my home, I could almost see each of the old boundaries of the city, still there within the fabric of the metropolis, like age rings within a tree. Once on the ground I took the express train to Shinagawa, a former outpost now at the heart of the city and the site of my mother’s last home. As I made my way through the underground corridors of the station, the endless tunnels of flashing neon posters and signs, I thought of all the things this place had once been, from a small village to an outpost of Edo to what it was now: an international gateway to Tokyo and the rest of Japan. From all over the world people were channelled through our airports in torrents towards Shinagawa and millions of commuters passed through these halls, the floors polished to such a high shine they mirrored us back to ourselves.
It was after rush hour but still busy as I made my way up the escalators and through the turnstiles before coming to a stop beneath the station clock. It was nearly time, the second hand ticked relentlessly on, and I imagined Kaitarō walking down a corridor, still handcuffed, towards the exit of the prison. I saw the guards readying his belongings – a bag of his clothes, the few items he had kept, and an envelope filled with the money he had earned in the factories. I saw them signing papers, unlocking his cuffs, and then as the clock struck nine with the tick of a pen and the swipe of a card, the doors opened, and calmly, if slowly, Kaitarō Nakamura emerged, blinking against the sun.
A tingle of fear danced along my spine, for now it was my turn to do the same. In front of me was a final covered walkway. At the very end I could just make out the intersection and the hordes of people crossing there, all heading to the embassies, hotels and vast office complexes that surrounded the station. I looked up at the clock again and my breath caught in my chest. It was well past nine but it was as though my life stood waiting. I could sense all of humanity outside beyond the arch, and I could either retreat from it and hide away or embrace it. I shifted my satchel on my shoulder, thinking of the photographs of my mother within and also the picture she had taken of me, and suddenly my choice was clear, as perhaps it always had been. Clasping my bag more securely, I started towards the exit, moving swiftly up the walkway and stepping out into the light.
Acknowledgements
This novel was inspired by a real trial in Tokyo that occurred in 2010, but it is a work of fiction. For the purposes of my narrative I have changed the time period, location, characters, and all the lives and choices depicted are entirely of my own invention. What fascinated me about the real case was the humanity of the original story, how we love, and what we are capable of doing to each other for love, and this is where the novel began. This book has been many years in the making, several of them spent travelling and researching in Japan with the aid of organisations there and in the UK, and it is now my great honour and privilege to finally acknowledge all the incredible individuals and institutions who have supported me and What’s Left of Me Is Yours.
I must start by thanking Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor of The Times who covered the original case in Tokyo and was kind enough to share his articles on the trial and insights into the Japanese marriage-breakup industry with me. I am particularly grateful to him for his advice over the years as well as his extraordinary People Who Eat Darkness, which introduced me to the Japanese legal system.
Many sources contributed to my research on Japanese law, foremost among them the Embassy of Japan in London and the prosecutors who have served as First Secretary of Legal Affairs there: Fumihiko Sakamoto and Naoya Maeda. I am also indebted to the attorneys in Tokyo who spoke with me about their training, careers, and the evolution of the law: Masako Suzuki, Aiko Kōma, Chie Komai, Fuki Iwai and Tomoko Kobayashi. Thank you for your enthusiasm, candour, and generosity: 今度東京に行くときは一杯おごらせて! I am also grateful to the legal professionals of the British Japanese Law Association who shared their expertise with me, and I am honoured to have been made a member of the BJLA.
For their scholarship on prosecuting crime in Japa
n, the significance of love in Japanese law, divorce law, child custody and child abduction, my sincere thanks to David T. Johnson, Mark D. West, Takao Tanase, Malcolm M. Feeley, Setsuo Miyazawa, Masayuki Murayama, Matt Antell and David Hearn. I was not able to access a prison in Japan, but I am deeply grateful to the Human Rights Watch Prison Project for their report ‘Prison Conditions in Japan’, including the ‘Handbook for Life in Prison’ from Fuchu Prison in 1994, an invaluable resource and contemporaneous to Kaitarō’s story in the novel.
So much of my research would not have been possible without the British Association of Japanese Studies and the Toshiba International Foundation that awarded me a Toshiba Studentship for my anthropological work on What’s Left of Me Is Yours and facilitated further fieldwork in Japan. I am also deeply grateful to all the wonderful people across Japan and particularly in Tokyo, Atami and Shimoda, who invited me into their homes, showed me around their neighbourhoods, and were so generous with their hospitality and time. To Masami Nakamura, Nori Tsuchiya, Sumiko Itagaki, Chie Matsuda, Henry Onodera, Yoshikuni Nakamura, Yumi Fukui, Yasuko Norita, the Family Ushirosako and the staff and students of Den-en Chofu Gakuen, thank you for welcoming me into your lives and treating me as one of your own.
To my ‘Japanese family’ in London, in particular, my dear friend Sumiko Sarashima, thank you for the gift of your beautiful name and for all the years of ‘Niku Nights’, encouragement and friendship. Thank you also to Otōsan, for all the bubbles that have kept me sane, and to Sayuri and Takumi for reminding me that dinosaurs – particularly stuffed ones – are far more important than anything else. I am honoured to be your godmother (although if you are reading this before 2030, you are too young!).
For regular late-night discussions, much-needed advice, and assistance with translation and writing in Japanese, my thanks to Asuka Isono, Kaori Maeda and Kazuko Yoshida. My work would also not have been possible without the online Monash University Japanese character dictionary.
On matters anthropological, I would like to thank Joy Hendry for her endless patience and for coming to my rescue on crows and time. I am grateful as well to the works of Melinda Papp, Peter Wynn Kirby, Dorinne K. Kondo, Yoshinobu Ashihara, Alex Kerr, Inge Daniels, Christopher Tilley, David Lowenthal and Nam-lin Hur. For their assistance in medical, forensic and psychological detail, I am indebted to Jill Harling, David Neame, Justin Parker and Leigh Curtis.
For their extraordinary photographs, articles, and insight into Japanese photography from the 1970s to the present day, my thanks to Masahisa Fukase, Yurie Nagashima, Shōmei Tōmatsu, Shōji Ueda, Ryūji Miyamoto, Masafumi Sanai, Seiichi Furuya and Daidō Moriyama. For their expertise in all technical aspects of photography, I am indebted to Holger Pooten of the London Institute of Photography, and Debbie Castro. I am also very grateful to the Jerwood/Arvon Prize for Prose Fiction, the National Centre for Writing ‘Inspires’ Award, the A. M. Heath Prize, and the Literary Consultancy / Peggy Chapman-Andrews Bridport First Novel Award, for seeing merit in the early manuscript and providing the writing retreats, encouragement and financial support I needed to complete it. Everything I got right is because of these incredible people and organisations. All errors are my own. 感謝してもしきれません.
What’s Left of Me Is Yours would never have gone out into the world without my wonderful agents, Antony Harwood and Grainne Fox. Thank you for believing in me and for prying the manuscript out of my hands! I am also eternally grateful to my editor, Margo Shickmanter. Thank you for loving these characters as much as I do and for pushing me to make the novel the best version of itself. Your insight and rigour are an inspiration. To Federico Andornino and everyone at Doubleday and Weidenfeld & Nicholson, What’s Left of Me Is Yours could not have found a better home, and I am thrilled to be published by you. Thank you for making this book – my dream – a reality.
I am very fortunate in the writing community I have around me, but I would not be here today without Louise Doughty. Louise, you gave me the courage to take myself seriously as a writer and to write professionally. I am more grateful than I can ever say. My thanks also to Richard Skinner, the Faber Academy, and the staff and students of the Creative Writing MSt at Oxford University, in particular Clare Morgan, Jane Draycott and Frank Egerton. I owe profound gratitude to the many mentors and friends who have supported me over the years: Nikita Lalwani, Liz Jensen, Jacqui Lofthouse, Nicola Upson, Tessa Manisty, German Munoz, Guinevere Glasfurd and Patience Agbabi. Thank you for your natural brilliance, endurance, invaluable insights, and gin. You are my heroes.
And last, but never least, I would like to thank my family. To Mum and Dad, everything I am today is because of you. Thank you for always believing in me and for supporting me through some pretty crazy decisions – like leaving a job in finance to write. Thank you for never wavering in your faith. To my husband, Tom, I could never have written this book without you. Thank you for the endless cups of tea, for reading and rereading my drafts (even when they just looked the same!) and, most importantly, for marrying me. You are my everything.
Praise for
‘This novel is a masterpiece. In What’s Left of Me Is Yours, Scott has delivered a breathtakingly original and haunting concept in the most exquisite prose. I never wanted it to end’
Lesley Kara, author of The Rumour
‘A brilliant debut’
Louise Doughty, author of Apple Tree Yard
‘Beautifully written, atmospheric, and immersive, Stephanie Scott’s What’s Left of Me Is Yours tells a propulsive story about heartbreak and loss and the greatest mystery of all, family’
Laurie Frankel, author of This Is How It Always Is
‘At once luminous and captivating, What’s Left of Me Is Yours is the best kind of fiction: it tells a truth. All the easy lies about love fall away, as Stephanie Scott explores its often bitter, twisting, aching core. This is a brilliant, haunting book’
Rene Denfeld, author of The Child Finder
‘A fascinating true crime story is here alchemised into a sensitive, elegiac, heartfelt and passionately controlled novel’
Adam Foulds, Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Quickening Maze
‘Stephanie Scott’s story of a woman’s murder sweeps the reader into a world in which love is fused with betrayal and truth is locked away. Beautiful, delicate and brutal, What’s Left of Me Is Yours is difficult to put down, impossible to forget’
Marti Leimbach, author of Dying Young
‘Remember that new-discovery, time-stopping, every-moment-is-magical kind of love? That’s what it felt like to read this novel. Then limerence turns to passion which leads to tragedy and suddenly this book is impossible to put down as you speed toward a conclusion that is as surprising as it is satisfying’
Jamie Ford, author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
‘Stephanie Scott’s debut novel is poignant, brave, and compelling; it will stay with me for a very long time’
Clarissa Goenawan, author of Rainbirds
‘A gripping legal thriller that digs deep into the complications of human emotion. A daughter’s quest for truth and understanding probes the delicate intersection of trust and betrayal, passion and loyalty, justice and compassion’
Lynne Kutsukake, author of The Translation of Love
‘Stephanie Scott has achieved that rare thing in her debut – a literary love story that reads like an assured thriller. Compelling, moving and intense, What’s Left of Me Is Yours reminds us that love is never without its dark side, families are never without secrets, and the deepest loss contains a seed of hope – if it can be found’
Stella Duffy
‘A beautiful, beautiful book that defies genre – and my words. There is a crime. There is betrayal. There is love. There is history. This is truly an epic, meticulously and lovingly researched, with such exquisite description and detail that I read the same lines over, many times. I
will not forget this book’
Louise Beech, author of How to Be Brave
‘Exquisitely written and beautifully told, What’s Left of Me Is Yours is a sensory journey to Japan and the darkest places of the heart. A story of the enduring bond between mothers and daughters, and the thin line that separates love and obsession’
Karen White, author of All the Ways We Said Goodbye
‘What’s Left of Me Is Yours is a formidably accomplished debut that offers a glimpse into the dark and intriguing world of the Japanese marriage breakup industry. Using multiple perspectives Scott deftly creates an impressionistic narrative in a process of slow revelation. A young lawyer seeks the truth about her mother’s death and as fragments of the past emerge, through photographs and legal statements, she begins to understand the elusive nature of truth and the proximity of love and death. Part Bildungsroman, part detective story, this is a deeply moving and beautifully written novel. I couldn’t recommend it more highly’
EC Fremantle, author of The Poison Bed
‘A gripping, beautiful, heartbreaking debut. Stephanie Scott stuns with her considerable talent in this Tokyo-set story of a young woman who dissects another’s life – that of her murdered mother – in order to find the truth about her own past’
Abigail Tarttelin, author of Dead Girls
‘What’s Left of Me Is Yours is part love story, part crime novel, exploring both romantic and family relationships as it charts a young woman’s search for the truth about her mother’s life and death. Set against a stylishly evoked backdrop of both past and present Japan, this is a beautifully written and meticulously researched novel. The illicit love story at the heart of this book is complex and unusual, but told with such insight that the deep, intense passion the couple experience almost rises from the page. This is a novel that is sure to stand out from the crowd’
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