"My Random Reading Record" by Tsugumi Akimitsu | #36 "Long Long Cake" Yumiko Oshima
"My Random Reading Record" is a series where PARK staff member Tsugumi Akimitsu, who is in charge of "books" at PARK GALLERY and is currently working hard in her hometown of Nagasaki to open a second-hand bookstore, introduces one book every week to everyone who visits PARK GALLERY.
A book is an encounter.
From Nagasaki, while thinking of the park, I will introduce a book that might become the catalyst for someone's wonderful encounter.
A book for July 4, 2024
"Long Long Cake" by Yumiko Oshima (Hakusensha)
During the rainy season, which has been marked by heavy rain, Nagasaki has seen some clear skies over the past few days, and the cicadas have started singing since the morning. Waking up at my parents' house on a summer morning, the temperature, humidity, sounds, and air make me feel, even at this age, like I'm having a flashback to the scent of summer vacation. It's that feeling of remembering "something about summer" that words cannot fully express. The air of a summer morning, crisp, bright, free, and a gentle mixture of liberation and impatience. A break in the rainy season, the beginning of summer.
When I think of such summer liberation, transience, and that dreamy, phantom-like sense of floating, I think of a work that simultaneously brings to mind a sherbet-like, piercing coldness and sweetness. That is "Long Long Cake" by Yumiko Oshima.
Yumiko Oshima:
Born in Tochigi Prefecture. Debuted with "Pola no Namida" while attending junior college. "Wata no Kuni Hoshi," which began serialization in "Monthly LaLa" in 1978, was drawn with a unique and rich sensibility and received a great response. Always active as a new wave in the world of girls' manga, she has many masterpieces such as "Banana Bread no Pudding" and "Ichigo Monogatari."
"Long Long Cake" is a short story collection that begins with "Ichou no Ki," a manga adaptation of Kenji Miyazawa's original work, and includes "Digitalis," "Akihiko Kaku Katariki," and others. Using small points of contact with the natural world and the universe as themes, it beautifully depicts complex psychology, such as human life and death and swirling romantic feelings.
Among them, the title story "Long Long Cake" begins with the protagonist, Kotaro, meeting an alien who teleported to Earth from a distant star one day. "U-san" changes its form as Kotaro wishes and begins to live his daily life. It is a sci-fi story where dreams and reality intersect, as it takes Kotaro's place, begins to lead his student life and interact with his friends, and transforms the world surrounding him.
Although it has a dramatic, manga-like premise where the dead or aliens are reincarnated as real humans living on Earth, it lacks any of that "very sci-fi" intense, forceful energy.
If anything, it is a fantasy that can be accepted as naturally as a scene from a dream that everyone has seen while sleeping, or something you might have imagined at least once while clearing your head and wondering, "What would happen if it were like this?"
As you delve into the story, you come to understand the meaning of having the characters reincarnated in the climax, but those endings are all too realistic.
It makes you awaken the consciousness that lies dormant within you, or makes you realize how certain or uncertain your relationships with family and lovers are, and it makes you notice the tears in the depths of your heart that people gloss over and smooth out as they live their daily lives.
Fantastic, poetic, emotional, bittersweet, and dreamy. But this is all the world we live in.
It is a work that serves as a catalyst for feeling that after repeating fantasies, what you arrive at is, after all, reality—your own inner self.
A moment before sleeping on a summer night.
It is a book I want to read in a comfortable, air-conditioned room, wrapped in a towel blanket in a space where I feel safe.
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Tsugumi Akimitsu
Upon turning 30, my life goal was set to run a "second-hand bookstore with a gallery space." I joined PARK GALLERY in the summer of 2022 and began apprenticing at a second-hand bookstore that autumn. In April 2024, I graduated from being a Thursday regular at the park, moved my base of operations to my hometown of Nagasaki, and have since begun full-scale preparations for opening my own business, while continuing to be active at PARK GALLERY as the "book person."
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