Rie Takemoto had a short but happy marriage to her husband Daisuke. Daisuke had moved to her small town in Kyushu a few years earlier after cutting all ties with his family in Tochigi, started to work as a logger, met Rie, and the two had a gentle courtship before getting married. When Daisuke suddenly dies in an accident at work, Rie contacts his estranged brother, who visits the shrine at the house and flatly denies that the man in the photograph is Daisuke.
To find out who her husband really was and why he had taken the identity of a complete stranger and never spoken to her about it, Rie employs Akira Kido, the lawyer who handled her previous divorce. Kido becomes increasingly intrigued with the case as he starts to uncover a murky trade in identities.
The book alternates between Rie and her children's attempts to come to terms with the sudden loss of a husband and stepfather and Kido's painstaking progress in uncovering the real identity of Daisuke while his own marriage drifts into crisis.
This is a very well written and translated book that sensitively handles many themes including bereavement, identity, the extent to which we are responsible for our behaviour, marital infidelity, and prejudice; the story is set shortly after the 2011 earthquake when there was a resurgence in nationalism in Japan and Kido is a third-generation Zainichi with ambivalent feelings toward his identity.
As well as thoroughly enjoying the story, I experienced a feeling of profound gratitude when reading A Man. As a foreigner with limited Japanese ability living in Japan, I felt grateful toward the author and the translator for producing a book in English that gave a nuanced and in-depth discussion of some of the contemporary issues in Japan that are either largely ignored or simplistically reported in the media. Even long-term residents of Japan will finish the book with their perception of the country slightly expanded. Highly recommended.
