Translated from the Japanese by Terry Gallagher
This story is incredibly sweet. Cavity-inducing sweet. It’s a lovely little thing about a widowed man whose sick wife promised to come back to check on him and their son, Yuji, a year after she has died during the rainy season. She tells him she will stay for the rainy season but leave as soon as it ends.
Nearly a year after Mio’s death, Takkun and his six-year old son Yuji are living a sad sort of life. Takkun goes to work and wears suits many sizes larger than he needs. Both he and his son walk around in dirty, food-stained clothing and eat instant foods in place of real meals. The reason Takkun is unable to do the very minimum things required to take care of a household and his son is because he suffers from an amalgam of disorders and anxieties. He cannot ride in a vehicle, enter a moving theatre or ride the elevator without being overwhelmed by a debilitating anxiety. The one great thing Takkun does is writes a novel about his wife, their life together and her life after death, which is of course spent on the planet Archive. The book is meant to be for his son, so he has something to remember Mio by.
On the first day of the rainy season, Takkun and Yuji find themselves walking in the middle of the woods, near an old abandoned factory. Yuji likes to search for bolts and parts while Takkun walks around. However, on this day they find Mio in the woods – she looks just like Mio anyway – but has no memories of life or of death. And this is how Be With You becomes kind of a ghost story.
Be With You features the perfect romance – one that doesn’t require explicit declarations of love or devotion. The love seems natural. What affected me about this book was its lack of any traditional climax or conflict. It relied entirely upon the love story and the story line. It ended up being just enough to hold your attention and create a perfectly enjoyable experience.
I can only imagine what this story would be like in its native language of Japanese. In fact, it was such a great book that they turned it into a movie and a miniseries. I’ve managed to get my hands on a subtitled version of the movie – I’m excited to see if it lives up to the book.
[Love|Like|Unworthy]
This is my third book for the Lost in Translation challenge.
Filed under: Literature Reviews, Takuji Ichikawa , Be With You, Japanese Literature, Lost in Translation, Takuji Ichikawa
