[Book Review] Michi Ichiho's 'Tsumidemic': Darkness and Hope Born in the COVID-19 Pandemic
That suffocating sense of confinement I felt during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This Naoki Prize-winning work depicts that era when our lives changed and the sins that accompanied it.
Attracted by the title, which combines "sin" (tsumi) and "pandemic,"
I bought it, but it had been sitting in my "to-read" pile for a few years.
With Michi Ichiho's new book coming out on 6/17,
I finally finished reading it.
Synopsis
Yuto, a college dropout, works part-time as a tout in the nightlife district. One day, a woman speaking in an Osaka dialect approaches him while he's working and calls herself by the name of a classmate who should have died in junior high school. Confused by his past memories and the woman's words, Yuto finds himself— "Birds of Different Feathers." Kyoichi, who lost his job as a chef, tends to stay cooped up at home, and his working wife's attitude toward him feels cold. One day, his first-grade son, Hayato, returns from playing with an old 10,000-yen bill featuring Prince Shotoku. He says he got it from an old man living in a nearby house. Kyoichi takes it from Hayato and uses it to buy cigarettes, but the next day, he makes his specialty clear soup and visits the old man's house— "Special Beneficiary." Lives swallowed by an unpredictable disaster end up in unexpected places. Six heart-shaking stories by a master storyteller.
Darkness and Hope Born in the COVID-19 Pandemic
How do we remember those few years called the COVID-19 pandemic now?
The streets were filled with people in masks, some lost their jobs, and the whole of society was wrapped in anxiety and fear of an invisible virus.
Looking back now, even though it was so suffocating and everyone was a participant, it feels somewhat like a distant fiction.
The Naoki Prize-winning work I'm introducing today, Michi Ichiho's 'Tsumidemic,' is a collection of short stories depicting the sins of that era we all experienced.
The increase in demand for home delivery due to the recommendation of non-face-to-face contact, remote work, financial hardship, and unemployment.
The changes in our lives are depicted realistically, and the portrayal of the dark side of human nature born from these social changes was painful to read.
The short stories in 'Tsumidemic' are fiction, but
I could feel that this was a reality that might have been happening right next to us during the pandemic.
Hearing this, you might think it's just a dark and heavy story.
However, that is not all there is to it, which is the brilliance of 'Tsumidemic' and Michi Ichiho's writing.
While depicting crime, the collapse of morals, and the dark side of humanity, there are also stories that hold hope for the future.
Precisely because it was an era where we were physically and forcibly kept apart, there are connections, bonds, and salvation between lonely people.
While depicting the murky ugliness of humans,
it doesn't completely lose hope in humanity at the very end.
That exquisite balance and the kindness of the stories are exactly what I think makes a Michi Ichiho work.
Recommended for people like this
𖧷 People who want to look back on the pandemic through literature
𖧷 People who want to read a rich collection of short stories
𖧷 People who want to feel the connection of hearts between people
are recommended to read this ♡
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