Call for love at the center of the world

Author: Kyoichi Katayama
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-03-01
Features: As everyone knows, α (alpha) and ω (omega) are the first and last of the 24 Greek letters. Westerners use them to symbolize the beginning and end of things. I bring this up not to be obscure, but as a quote from the author of this novel, Kyoichi Katayama. In an interview, he said, "To fall in love with someone is a person's α, and also their ω." At the same time, he said his work's core is about love, love, and love. And indeed, this "Love in the Center of the World" tells a pure and tragic love story. No, strictly speaking, it should be two love stories that happen to a grandfather and his grandson. When the grandfather was young, he fell in love with a teenage girl suffering from tuberculosis. At the time, tuberculosis was nearly incurable, so the grandfather ran from his hometown to Tokyo to earn money desperately in order to marry her and support her. When he returned to his hometown with money, the girl's illness was cured due to the discovery of streptomycin. Being cured meant she could marry. However, her parents were unwilling to marry her to the grandfather, who was in the "messy business," and instead married her to a "honest man." Soon after, the grandfather also got married. Fifty years later, the grandfather takes his grandson to rob a tomb, taking a little of the loved one's ashes and putting them in a small camphor wood box, handing it to the grandson and instructing him to mix it with his own ashes (about the same weight) after his death, and scatter them on the hill where the other person liked to grow forget-me-nots. At this time, the grandson is in love with a beautiful, kind, and studious girl named Aki in his class. Unsurprisingly, Aki later develops leukemia. Despite "I" praying to the gods every night, willing to suffer in exchange for Aki's recovery, Aki still turned to ashes in the desolate valley—"All was silent, no human voice, no bird song. Listening closely, faintly came the sound of the furnace burning Aki. I watched the smoke of the one I loved most in the world rise silently into the winter sky." What remained was only Aki's ashes. "I" and Aki's parents flew to Australia, scattering her ashes on the light brown grassland she had longed for in her lifetime. But I didn't scatter them all, leaving a little in a transparent small glass bottle to bring back. Finally, "I" came under the cherry blossom tree where I had studied with Aki. "White ashes flew like snow toward the evening sky. Then a gust of wind came, and cherry blossom petals fluttered down. Aki's ashes merged with the petals and vanished in an instant."