Abstract

Kazuki died from an illness at the young age of 25. In a tone both humorous and heartwarming, the story follows the subsequent lives of people who were close to him, particularly his widow, Tetsuko, and weathercaster father, Rentaro.
Seven years after Kazuki’s death, Tetsuko and Rentaro remain in the 80-year-old Japanese-style home where they all lived together during the two brief years that Tetsuko and Kazuki were married. Other key figures in the story include Kazuki’s mother, Yuko, who also died at a young age; their next-door neighbor, Takara (female), who grew up with Kazuki; and Kazuki’s cousin, Torao (male). The multilayered narrative explores, through a series of episodes, relationships among family members both with and without blood ties.
Affirmative in its stance, the narrative warmly accepts people as they are, warts and all, treating even the most unfortunate errors in judgment and weaknesses of heart as an inevitable part of the human condition.

Author’s Information

Izumi Kizara is the joint pen name of Tsutomu Izumi (1952–) and his wife Tokiko Mega (1957–). Izumi was a stand-up comedy writer, and Mega wrote scripts for radio plays, before they joined forces to write the television drama Suika (Watermelon) in 2003 and won the Mukoda Kuniko Prize, awarded for excellence in scriptwriting. In the years since, they have produced a succession of hit television dramas and received numerous additional awards. In 2013 they collaborated on their first novel, Last Night’s Curry, Tomorrow’s Bread, which became a bestseller; it was voted runner-up for the Booksellers Award, and has been named a finalist for the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize.