00015 · Tokyo Ueno Station
There are two ways into the book, Tokyo Ueno Station. One way is to read it straight through from the beginning, as most books are intended, and get lost in the hallucinatory tale of Kazu, a homeless man in Ueno Park.
The second way is to start with the author’s afterword at the end of the book (as well as the translator’s note if you’re reading the English translation). For some grounding, I’d recommend the the afterword, as Japanese culture is disorienting enough. This book references the disastrous effects of the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, especially to the Fukushima prefecture, and gives some background to help a reader understand Kazu’s plight.
The author, Yū Miri, is a Korean-Japanese writer. Though Japanese is her native language, as a Korean citizen she is an outsider, intent on giving voice to the voiceless in Japan.
Her story follows Kazu as he wanders the busy area around Tokyo’s Ueno Station. Kazu’s life is a strange inverted mirror of the imperial family. Kazu is invisible: he is old; he is poor; he is homeless; he is from the countryside; he has no family; he is powerless. He represents all the people we willingly unsee. It doesn’t matter whether he is dead or alive, and in this book, you’re not quite sure what state of life or afterlife he is in.
I read the book with great interest, as I lived in Tokyo for four months, quite near Ueno Station. I wandered Ueno Park nearly daily, and found something new and extraordinary with every visit. Think of New York’s Central Park for comparison, but throw in temples, national museums, baseball fields, and stunning natural beauty. As a foreigner, I too was strangely invisible, and could eavesdrop on the comings and goings of all classes of Japanese on their daily business, though I was unable to translate what was going on either in language or culture. I wandered around the station in a dream, and while I have no lived experience to share with Kazu, I could share his sense of timeless detachment to the “real world.”
Having lived most of my life in Phoenix, I have a pretty good understanding of how America drives people into their times of homelessness. Reading this book gives an understanding into the unique ways that Japan alienates its citizens into times of isolation, poverty, and homelessness. Kazu is unable to maintain the lifetime employment so important to the Japanese, and he spends his life working away from his family, leaving him completely unmoored when he loses them.
I barely understand my Japanese experiences. It was very hard for me to see past the surface of anything, especially the people. But this book helps me comprehend some of the people I saw every day around Ueno, cutting through the strange with a universal and haunting tale of one person’s humanity.
