Bruce Allen

This beautiful book is written by Michiko Ishimure, who is called the Rachel Carson of Japan due to her concern for the environment. Her writings have been said to have started the environmental movement in Japan. I am not sure how many of her writings have been translated into English, but Bruce Allen did a very good job translating this book. It has a poetical style which lends itself very well to the dream-like quality of the story.

A young man, Masahiko, travels from Tokyo to a show more traditional mountain village where his grandfather had been born. His grandfather had left this village as a young man, but the village and its people continued to live on in his heart. He had requested that his ashes be returned to this village upon his death.

Masahiko undertakes this task at O-bon, Japan's yearly festival of the dead. Upon his arrival he encounters two women from the village, Omomo and Ohina, who are preparing to celebrate O-bon on the shores of the lake that is now covering their old village due to the dam that was built above it. On the evening of O-bon, another woman from the village, Sayuri, drowns in this lake. Sayuri was the guardian of the waters, and now someone else must be trained to take her place. It is decided that Omomo must perform this role.

Within this framework, Ishimure writes about the lives of the villagers displaced by the dam, their struggle to maintain their traditions and to keep their stories alive.

Besides the ashes of his grandfather, Masahiko has traveled with his grandfather's stringed musical instrument, the biwa, and he attempts to bring the music of the biwa alive within himself, to make the strings tell the story that is waiting to be told. show less