“When I first met you, I felt something no other woman had made me feel before. It was something completely different.”
“I felt the same way about you.”
“You were this down-to-earth girl in love with your country life. I was barely a blip on your radar. I’ve been attracted to you ever since, and the attraction grew even stronger after the incident with Anna.” With his other hand he cupped my chin, and I could feel his words on my face. “I know what you did, Mayu, what you did for Anna.”
Something inside me burst like a bubble, and I pushed Shigeki away. How did he know?
“Remember that night,” he went on, “when Anna woke up and walked out of her room? Her shirt was all wrinkled and rolled up, and her back was exposed. I didn’t see any signs of abuse then. There were no scars or wounds on her back. It was white as white can be.”
“You knew what I did?”
He slowly stood and took out a bottle of wine from the sideboard and prepared two glasses. I followed his every move, all the while wondering—as my heart throbbed—what went through his mind when I said “what I did.”
“I didn’t know what exactly happened to Anna at the time, but I wondered about what drove you to slap Pierre, the state of mind you were in then. I also thought about how much you adored Jean, his way of life, his selflessness. So I figured it out and believed in your conviction that what you did was morally right, that you were answering to a higher calling.”
“You believed in me,” I said. “At that time, that’s what I had to do. I was convinced I had no other choice.” I went on, venting, grateful at the warmth of opening up, until he interrupted me.
“I felt safe with you. I felt sure you were never going to abandon me. You were too strong to do such a thing.”
For so long I had believed that Shigeki was a philanderer, a Lothario, bedding the girls and making them cry. In truth, he wasn’t fleeing from the girls, the girls had been fleeing from him, from his coldhearted and violent nature that surfaced from time to time.
When I slowly leaned into his chest again, I fell silent, overcome with happiness. All those scars of abuse I witnessed in Jean’s church; the first time I met Anna; the crying I began to hear in my mind. Now it all made sense. When I decided to share my life with Shigeki, I thought I had entered into a world that was unrelated, that had no connection to the world of all those lost souls in France. But the surprising truth was that the world I entered with Shigeki was just as sad, just as sinful, and just as in need of redemption.
I suppose my life until now has only been the beginning, a preamble to the new crusade I’m about to champion.
The birth of my child made me see this.
AFTERWORD
By Tsuguya Araki, Representative Director of Family Counseling Service (NPO)
This novel is a portrayal of alienation, guilt, and redemption in the modern age. Whenever a person has something to protect, he or she always stands the risk of unintentionally hurting others. And when this happens, an individual may become ostracized and find him- or herself plunged into a lonely existence. Such a person may become the object of envy, because at a superficial level she will appear to be free from worldly ties. However, a deeper examination will often reveal that she is very lonely and that her soul is actually relentlessly crying out for help.
The children appearing in this novel, such as Anna, Pierre, Raiki, and the young Shigeki, are all victims of child abuse in one way or another. In effect, they are manipulated by parents who either feel the need to use them to make ends meet or perceive them as threats to the family name. In Simone’s case, she uses Anna to pay her bills, and Simone becomes addicted to drugs and alcohol and loses the affection and respect of her children, as attested by the fact that Pierre, her son, comes close to murdering her.
Shigeki is physically abused by his stepfather, and his mother puts him through a grueling study regimen. Consequently, his relationship with his parents turns so sour that he avoids referring to them as “father” or “mother,” using such terms as “that guy” instead.
The main characters in this story easily excite envy, as they all seem to be blessed, leading privileged, carefree, happy lives. Kanako is beautiful and the only daughter of a company president; Taichi is Kanako’s husband and a hardworking man who succeeds in expanding his father-in-law’s company; Shigeki is an entrepreneur who is not only talented but is refined and wealthy; and then there is Mayu, who is from a respectable family composed of a father who is a university professor, a wise mother who is also a good wife, and an older brother who is successful in his career.
However, these two families end up inviting the twin sufferings of alienation and bitterness and become dysfunctional because they both go after societal approval; they both seek to protect reputations. So, contrary to outward appearances, these two families are in no way happy and have a share of their own villains in them. But as is the case in any family, there really are no black-and-white villains, not in the absolute, archetypal sense. Their choices make them seem villainous, and in this story it is the choice of protecting one’s family honor—defending its prestige in the eyes of society—that leads to the particularly devastating tragedy that unfolds in this tale. Namely, the destruction of the most precious bonds between humans: the bond between husband and wife or between parent and child. And this destruction in turn leads to the negation of a person as an individual, which is in effect a “murder of the soul,” breeding alienation, a state of mind where individuals wear masks to protect “the self” from the misery of loneliness.
People whose lives aren’t dictated by any urgency to protect private property tend to adopt a philosophy that values “the unvarnished truth” and are consequently more accepting of other people and their ideas. Mayu, during her time in France, is freed from family ties and lives in a financially modest manner. But she is nonetheless brimming with hopes and dreams and is able to accept people as they are—to appreciate “the unvarnished truth” about them, as it were.
Many people today may appear at a glance to be happy, but in truth they are weary with sorrow, their souls crying out for help. The sad irony of it all, however, is that the most precious bonds that promise mutual understanding between two people, such as husband and wife and parent and child, oftentimes prove to be the root cause of most of the emotional turbulence two people experience in their lives, deepening their estrangement from each other and making them lead more isolated existences.
This could happen to anyone, regardless of whether one is rich or poor, right or wrong. But at such times of sorrow, having that special someone in your life, someone who would let you cry freely and embrace you with open arms, could make a huge difference. I strongly feel that we Japanese are living in a day and age when such a bond is particularly vital; all the more so because many of us are—unlike Jean, a man of the cloth—bereft of faith.
Having just one person in your life who is able to relate to you, accept and like you just the way you are, and offer you a hug when you are in need of one, can embolden you when all hope seems lost, making it possible for you to recover from all kinds of disappointments and setbacks. But more important, through such a person, it also becomes possible for the downhearted individual to develop good relationships with others and ultimately reconnect with the world.
This novel shows that “love” and “hate” are two sides of the same coin and that they are both latent in all of us. It also shows that no matter how cold and bitter a heart becomes, healing can occur as long as there is empathy and acceptance—or, in other words, love.
Starting in the 1980s, Japan’s economy flourished, triggering a major transformation in Japanese society during which long-held core values were replaced. Amid such volatile times, an increasing number of people felt disenfranchised, finding it difficult to embrace change, to reinvent themselves to meet new challenges. Feeling forlorn, they started to believe that society was denying them the recognition they deserved as individuals wort
hy of attention. Lacking in self-esteem, they found themselves to be misfits in a society that ignored them and were therefore unable to discover their true calling to pursue their hopes and dreams.
The rise in the rate of truancy and the phenomenon of hikikomori (acute social withdrawal seen among reclusive adolescents and young adults) was attributable to such individuals. Among them are the abused children who feign disinterest in their parents as a way of protecting themselves. But they continue to cry without a voice, marooned in their solitude.
Help. Help. Somebody help.
There has never been a greater demand than in this present day and age for social counselors. I highly recommend this book as required reading for those who are aspiring to take on such a responsibility.
With this book, I feel the author has not only demonstrated her prowess as a novelist but also as a superior counselor. The author, after all, is poignantly aware that there are other Annas to be found everywhere around the world.
I look forward to reading her next work soon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © Edward Kishimoto, 2013
Born in 1950, Shiho Kishimoto graduated from Japan’s Women’s College of Fine Arts before holding a post in the Hong Kong branch of a Japanese trading company, where she was a currency trader. After appearing in court as a witness for the prosecution in a high-profile tax-evasion lawsuit against Mitsukoshi, she wrote the essay “My One Other Occupation.” In 2003 she marked her debut as a novelist with the release of I Hear Them Cry, which was awarded the Toyo Shuppan Literary Award. Her other awards include the Tenth Shinpusha Foucault Masterpiece Award for the best short-story anthology for Lottery and the Aichi Publishing Critics’ Award for her novel I See a Stranger. She lives in Tokyo, where she is active as a lecturer.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Photograph © Koji Chikatani, 2013
Based in Yokohama, Japan, Raj Mahtani has been weathering the wild seas of Japanese to English translation since the early nineties and along the way has contributed to a number of publications, including Adweek and the Japan Times Weekly. Among his recent translations are Rieko Saegusa’s Tale Winds, an intimate account of a former flight attendant’s encounter with humanity that unfolded 39,000 feet in the air; Akiko Hoshino’s Painted Cookies, a sugarcraft expert’s guide to creative cookies; and Fumitada Naoe’s Live with Meaning. Die with Passion, a visually stunning self-help guide to navigating life. Equipped with a BA in international affairs and a double minor in communications and theater from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, Raj occasionally muses on his blog, Passage J (rmaht.typepad.com), about contemporary Japanese artists and writers, and he works closely with TranNet, a Japanese literary translation agency based in Tokyo. His aim, at the end of the day, is to offer lateral glimpses into what makes Japan, his wonderland home, so dynamic and inspiring. He recently translated Randy Taguchi’s Fujisan.
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