Sweet Bean Paste

by Durian Sukegawa

  He saw a brilliant full moon, rising up from behind the silhouette of the holly hedge on the other side of the coppice, as if being born in that moment and place.

  ‘Oh!’ Wakana exclaimed in wonder.

  The moon rose higher, hidden at intervals by trees swaying in the wind, and poured its pulsing beams of light down on them.

  Sentaro turned to the cherry sapling and whispered, ‘The moon has arrived.’

  Author’s Note

  Twenty years ago I was a vocalist in a rock band and a late-night radio personality. Young people from all over Japan phoned in to tell me their grievances, sorrows, hopes and dreams, and in return I often asked my listeners: ‘What is life all about?’

  I wasn’t asking for an answer; I simply wanted them to think about it. Their replies, however, were always much the same: I was born to be a useful member of society. If I can’t be that, life has no meaning.

  This admirable sentiment is much approved of in Japan, but I could never bring myself to give it the nod. I knew a child, the band-producer’s son, who had died at the age of two. And I had heard about the former Hansen’s patients who, by law, had been shut up in sanatoriums and isolated from society for decades, long after being cured. When that unjust legislation was repealed in 1996 their story became widely known to the public.

  Some lives are all too brief, while others are a continual struggle. I couldn’t help thinking that it was a brutal assessment of people’s lives to employ usefulness to society as a yardstick by which to measure their value.

  There has to be a reason for being born, irrespective of individual circumstance. I was thinking about this one evening, as I gazed at the thin scattering of stars in the Tokyo night sky, when I came to a decision. I would write about the meaning of life with a fresh perspective, in the context of Hansen’s disease. But I was neither a patient nor a medical professional, and much time was to pass before I could begin writing. I met former patients and began to spend time with them in the sanatorium on which Tenshoen is based, and where they still live. Only then could I finally assemble the thoughts on which to base my story.

  I began with the concept of a greater force that created human beings, rather than examining human society per se; the idea that we have been nurtured by the universe to prove its existence. If there is no single conscious mind capable of doing this, the existence of the universe itself becomes unverifiable. It cannot exist. Over the aeons the universe has nurtured life forms whose very awareness makes them involved in its continued existence. Hence we are all alike in having materialized on this Earth because that was what the universe so desired. The ill, the bed-ridden, and children whose lives are over before they’ve barely begun; all are equal in their relationship to the universe. 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.

  Durian Sukegawa, March 2017

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  A Oneworld Book

  First published in North America, Great Britain and Australia

  This ebook published by Oneworld Publications, 2017

  Originally published in Japanese as An

  Copyright © Durian Sukegawa, 2013, 2015

  English translation copyright © Alison Watts, 2017

  First published in Japan in 2013 by Poplar Publishing Co., Ltd. Japan

  and revised edition published in 2015 by Poplar Publishing Co., Ltd.

  English translation rights arranged with Poplar Publishing Co., Ltd., through

  Japan UNI Agency, Inc.

  and Vicki Satlow Literary Agency Società Cooperativa

  The moral right of Durian Sukegawa to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

  incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used

  fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under Berne Convention

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-78607-195-8

  eBook ISBN 978-1-78607-196-5

  This book is partially funded by a grant from Books from Japan, from the

  Japanese Literature Publishing and Promotion Centre

  Oneworld Publications

  10 Bloomsbury Street

  London WC1B 3SR

  England

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