“Still in his blue silk pyjamas, Mumei sat with his bottom flat on the tatami. Perhaps it was his head, much too large…”

It is post apocalypse, an eco-dystopian futurescape wrapped up in a warm family narrative. Yoshiro minds his ailing grandson. The pathos is thick. The humour wry and unjudgemental.  A malaise has fallen like fog over the city. People acquiesce. “Unable to turn back the clock, they let themselves be turned.”   The children are sickening, the grandparents getting older. Food is dangerous. the oceans are poisoned. There is a monumental scene where Yoshiro is preparing an orange for Mumei. Borders are closed. Mention of a foreign city is forbidden. No one has as yet been prosecuted but “nothing is more frightening than a law that has not been enforced.”

The passivity has spread even into the authoritarian powers. Police have been privatised. They are reduced to marching bands and charging for giving people directions. “Words like suspect, investigation and arrest have disappeared from the newspaper”.

This short translation has gone under most radars but stands comparison with the vogue for Japanese novellas. Clever. Timely perhaps.