The Homeless Japanese ghost by Miri Yu

The repetitive life of our homeless narrator that captivates you with his words. You can see hidden Japan in the shadows, the real Tokyo. He is a social outcast that describes his own view of life. It is heartwarming but sad throughout the short novel. It is a discussion of love, life, and death beautifully assembled using different imagery and tone to describe his feelings or what he is experiencing.

The main character, Kazu is a struggling working-class member, he is a social outcast, he was born the same year as the emperor, and both the men’s sons were born on the same day. It shows the parallelism that the world can involve. The emperor’s son is born in a privileged life while Kazu’s son was born in a low-income family. Equally, it talks about the theme of death as his son’s life was cut short by an early death at the age of 21 for natural reasons. The emperor and his son will live a healthy and privilege life while Kazu would live his afterlife as a homeless man, the same as when he was alive. “I did not live with intent; I only lived”. This is a critique of life in Japan as the author is a Korean minority living in Japan.

The story is a continuous back and forward to his past life, from his son to his wife. We can clearly seen that his life was not extremely lucky. He was one of the men that helped construct the Japan we now know but he never got to live the glory. It is not completely clear if he is really a ghost or just the image of a homeless man that becomes invisible from the point of view of society. However, it shows how he really does become a ghost. He hears conversation of people leaving the station about normal and mundane things. He focuses a lot in clothes and what people are wearing, a symbol of money and privilege.

Time in this novel is not conformist. It keeps changing from present to past and to future one interrupting the other without further explanation. It keeps turning into a sad tone however, he is not hopeless or guilty of his living situation. He is calm as he listens to what other people discuss and what other people say.

This novel has become one of my favourite Japanese novels. It is filled with beautiful narrative and descriptions but my favourite part is the way it is written. The use of time is not confusing, it is exactly what it should be. It goes back and forward interrupting itself as to show how a real mind works. Life is not a straight line, just like the book, you do not turn a page and see another, you pass the page and there is a blank page, waiting to be written on.