Paperback, 208 pages
English language
Published Oct. 5, 2017 by Oneworld Publications.
Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste. But everything is about to change. Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape and Tokue's dark secret is revealed, with devastating consequences.
This was a sweet little book about dorayaki and unlikely friendship. Thematically, it also deals with social stigma, being trapped, and listening more closely to the world around you. This was definitely on the sentimental side, but it was a breath of fresh hopeful air.
This was on my list based on the pitch of âbook where nothing happensâ. The only thing I would add is â;heartfelt, big emotionsâ. I donât want to say too much more since the magic is finding out for yourself how big the world can get in the smallest of moments. If you enjoy slice of life, this is 100% for you. If slice of life isnât typically your thing, but you are moved by deep character growth and human intimacy, this will be worth your time.
Content warning major plot point/ending spoilers here
âBean paste is all about feeling, young man.â
A weirdly calming read about an ex-convictâs dorayaki shop and the mysterious elderly Tokue he hires for basically peanuts. I say weirdly calming, because this book went places that I wasnât expecting from the summary. I had some serious mood whiplash moments while reading this short, sweet, ultimately sad little novel.
Ex-convict Sentaro runs a dorayaki shop to pay off a debt. Heâs making a rough go of it initially, because while he makes the pancakes from scratch, he buys pre-made sweet bean paste (name drop!) rather than make it from scratch. As a result his sweets are middling at best, and he doesnât get much foot traffic as a result. Tokue, elderly woman with strangely twisted, ugly hands, starts hanging around his shop trying to get Sentaro to hire her. At first he refuses, but itâs only when she names some minuscule sum of money as her wage in exchange for making her sweet bean paste from scratch for him that he reluctantly hires her on. What follows is the two of them turning the shop aroundâuntil we start learning more about Tokue and her past.
I went into this blind, so when Tokueâs big reveal came, I was sort of floored. Leprosy was definitely not on my list of potential baggage. I was thinking more like dementia or homelessness or something. Regardless, this ended up being a pretty touching read for something so mood whiplash-y. I do sort of wish we find out how Sentaro ends up; I was rooting for him to open his own shop modeled after Tokueâs sweet bean paste, but the book ends before we get that far.
Still, a good, quick read. I sort of wish I had my own dorayaki to eat while reading this.
A sweet story.
3.5 stars
This book tugged at my heart strings and made me cry â¤ď¸
Fecking lovely.
I started reading this book at least partly because I absolutely love Dorayaki (pancakes filled with sweet red bean paste). To be fair I love most sweets, so this is a low bar. And while it starts quite whimsically, the story soon changes and highlights something I never knew anything about - the treatment of Hansens's Disease (leprosy) sufferers in Japan.
Up until 1996 people that had suffered from the illness, even if they had been cured for decades with no risk of any transmission, were locked away in sanatoriums. This is a large part of what's behind this story, and it also serves as a way to more generally question the value of a life, and the notion that a life should or could be measured by its usefulness to society as a whole.
