Strangers

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On the night of his birthday, hit by a wave of nostalgia, he visits the entertainment district of Asakusa where he grew up. His parents died many years ago, killed in a road accident when he was 12 and they were in their mid thirties. In the old and now run-down streets he goes to the theatre where he sees a mediocre comedian. In the audience he is astonished to see a man who looks exactly like his long-dead sushi chef father. Invited for drinks at the man’s home, Harada is even more astounded to find that the wife looks exactly like his dead mother. They’re the same age as his parents were when they died. It’s that yearning that compels him to make return visits. Every time he does so, he feels bathed in the warmth of their welcome and their easy acceptance of him. Over the course of a few visits he relaxes enough to begin calling them Mom and Dad, finding a deep pleasure in their company and the opportunity to re-live happy childhood experiences as well as make up for lost time.

It sounds like the starting point for a dark, terrifying descent into mania and doubt, or else a paranoiac thriller. However, Taichi Yamada takes a more subdued approach. The protagonist, Harada, has a quiet life: recently divorced, he rarely socialises and lives in a near-empty building. A secondary plot strand involves his burgeoning relationship with a neighbour, Kei, who shies away from the world because of the scars caused by a severe burn across her chest. Harada's encounters with his parents are disconcertingly ordinary. A note of horror creeps in when others notice Harada physically declining, though he is unable to see the change. Strangers has also been made into a movie, Ijintachi to no Natsu (1988), directed by Obayashi Nobuhiko, and apparently released in the US under the titles The Discarnates and Summer Among the ZombiesThis is a strange little book. The protagonist, Harada, is a middle aged screenwriter, orphaned aged twelve when his parents are killed in a traffic accident. Recently divorced, he throws himself into his work. He is tired and lonely. The old neighbourhood has, of course, changed dramatically since then, but he's still somehow drawn to it.

Strangers (Japanese title Ijintachi to no natsu 異人たちとの夏 Summer of the Strange People) is a novel by Taichi Yamada, published in 1987. The English translation by Wayne Lammers was published in 2003. Yamada's manner of stripped-down storytelling leaves much to the reader, but he manages tempo very subtly, as Harada moves between fear and elation, and his reacquaintance with his parents is deepened in nicely pitched snatches of dialogue and imagery: "I could see the mannerisms of a dashing artisan in the way my father swung his arms and strutted along, and I found it quite endearing." Only by allowing colleagues, friends, and family -- all of whom he had largely abandoned or allowed to drift away -- to help can he be saved.

A) story that pens in spare strokes a portrait of urban alienation. (...) Less subtle, unfortunately, are the vagaries of the translation into American English. (...) What survives, however, is a memorably uncanny tapestry, and a powerful atmosphere, of heat and rain and sorrow." - Steven Poole, The Guardian David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) said "highly recommended, a cerebral haunting ghost story" & Bret Easton Ellis describes this as "an eerie ghost story written with hypnotic clarity, intelligent & haunting with passages of acute psychological insight into the relationship between children & parents".