Sweet Bean Paste

If all you ever see is reality, you just want to die. The only way to get over barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.’

All experience adds up to a life lived as only you could

But what about a child whose life is over before he or she even turns two years old? People may wonder, in their sorrow, what point there is in a child like that even being born.

I have learned the answer to this. I am sure it is for that child to perceive wind, sky, and voices in his or her own unique way. The world that child senses exists because of it, and therefore that child’s life, too, has purpose and meaning.

We have the ability to open up our ears and minds to anything and everything.

All the time he had ever squandered in his life seemed to be clinging to his footsteps, dragging him down. He felt as if he were a scrap of rubbish, drifting through one backstreet alley after another.

‘I don’t want to disappoint you, but Toku herself said at the time that she couldn’t actually hear the voices of beans. But if you live in the belief that they can be heard, then someday you might be able to hear them. She said that was the only way for us to live, to be like the poets. That’s what she said. If all you ever see is reality, you just want to die. The only way to get over barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.’

It was not failure to try and live an honest life – the result of leading an honest life was the wreckage of his days now. In short, Sentaro suffered because he was who he was.

I’m nearly at the end of my time, and because of this there are things I know. I had to spend my whole life living with the consequences of Hansen’s disease. Looking back on what life was like when

I first entered the sanatorium, then ten years later, twenty years later, thirty years later, and now I’m approaching the end, I can see how different the colour of my days were at each stage.

Four thousand souls. Four thousand people who never went home. He felt their eyes boring down on him from above.

Tokue paused. ‘Fourteen,’ she said finally, then loudly blew her nose. ‘I underwent an examination and afterwards had to get in a disinfectant bath. They disposed of everything I wore or brought with me. I begged the nurse in tears to let me keep the blouse my mother made. But she said no, that was the rule. I asked her to give it to my brother at least so he could take it back with him. Then she told me he’d already gone, that I didn’t have family with me any more. And she said I should use a different name from now on. That’s what they said…that’s what we were told to do…I cried and screamed at the top of my voice – why did this have to happen to me? I knew what would happen. People with leprosy weren’t allowed out in society. I’d seen lepers before and thought they were scary. But never once did I ever imagine that would be me…’ Tokue faltered again.