Strangers

by Taichi Yamada

Book Overview

Television scriptwriter Harada encounters a man who resembles his dead father, and following this mysterious man through the city, Harada finds a world inhabited with lost souls, including his dead... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932234039
• ISBN13: 9781932234039
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Vertical
• Length: 203 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

A Thinking Man's Ghost Story

Harada is a recently divorced TV scriptwriter whose parents were killed in an automobile accident when he was young. He lives in a large building in Tokyo that is filled with businesses during the day, but he is usually alone in the building at night. He is at a low point in his life and utterly lonely. He's estranged from his son and has just been told by his producer they can no longer work together as the producer is in love with his ex-wife. One day he decides to take a sentimental journey back to his childhood neighborhood and, while there, he meets a man in a comedy club who bears an incredible resemblance to his father, a man who, if he were alive today, would be well over 70, but is only 40, the age he was when he died. Harada is invited to the man's home and goes, where he meets a woman who could be his mother, still in her 30s, the age at which she died. These ghostly parents of Harada's are now younger than he is. After that he visits often. His parents are always there, always happy to see him. Together they do family things, have dinner, drink, play cards, and it slowly dawns on Harada that his parents know they are dead. It appears that Harada is somehow responsible for their afterlife and it appears that they are somehow breathing death into him. But Harada can't resist the opportunity to recapture his childhood. He keeps coming back and he begins to lose track of himself. Each visit takes a toll on his physical body, he becomes gaunt and sallow, ghostly. He finds himself torn between the real world and the eerie pull of his dead parents. He questions his sanity and wonders if his soul is lost. Then during a sukiyaki party with his parents, they slowly disappear. They know they are going without ever knowing why they'd come back. Harada doesn't know why either, nor do we. This is why this book is a thinking man's ghost story. It surrounds you with an eerie and haunting feeling as you read it. It subtly takes you into issues of isolation and loneliness, insanity and the supernatural, but it is also a truly touching story, a story that will be with you for weeks after you finish it.

4.5 stars

This book was very atmospheric. I found myself thinking about it long after reading the novel, and the story somewhat reminded me of an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Harada lives in a building on a very busy street in Tokyo. However, most of the units in the building have been converted to office space and, consequently, there are only two tenants there after hours. He's a little spooked by the quietness in the building at night but chalks it up to being recently divorced and unused to being alone. One night he decides to go to his hometown where he meets a couple who are the spitting image of his long-dead parents. He keeps going back to see them to try to determine who they really are. There are other strange happenings in his life that I won't spoil for you here. It's a short book that can be read in a few hours, and I encourage anyone interested in world literature to read it. The `quiet suspense' of the novel impressed me and made me want to read more by this author.

A modern Japanese ghost story

A middle-aged, cynical and now divorced TV scriptwriter Harada is living a lonely self-contained life in his work-come-apartment when on the spur of the moment he returns to the dilapidated downtown district of Tokyo where he grew up. Orphaned at an early age and raised first by his grandfather and then his Uncle, Harada is very much removed from human emotions, unhappy but not knowing understanding that he is unhappy he is looking for something that he is not able to find in the modern world that he has to live in. Whilst wandering through his old childhood home he visits a theatre and meets a man who looks exactly like his long-dead father with a wife who is the image of his equally long dead mother. And so begins Harada's journey into the land of strangers, as he's drawn into a reality where his parents appear to be alive at the exact age they had been when they had died so many years before. Is he living a dream? Are these people real? What is happening to him? A spooky ghost story with a modern twist, well worth a read.

Fast fun and interesting book

This is a great ghost story where nothing makes sense until the end. It`s about a divorced man in Tokyo who has had a very sad life. His parents died when he was a child and he was sent to work on a farm in Aichi prefecture. After University he becomes a T.V. writer and marries. Several years after that his marriage falls apart and his health falls apart and he is visited by the ghost of his parents and meets a mysterious woman. It`s a fantastic book.

Hauntingly told, with a sublimely subtle undercurrent

Succinctly translated into English by Wayne Lammers, Strangers is a Japanese novel by Taichi Yamada of a jaded TV scriptwriter who feels pangs of loneliness, and encounters an ordinary workingman that is, eerily, the very mirror image of the father he lost years ago in a tragic accident that orphaned him. Hauntingly told, with a sublimely subtle undercurrent to the tides of emotion, Strangers is an unforgettable journey through memories and the inner striving to reach out and contact others.