The Little House

Kyoko Nakajima's The Little House (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori) is wonderful. Similar to what she does in many of her short stories, she leaves the really impactful bits right to the end.

Most of the book is set between 1930 and the war and told by Taki, a housemaid in Tokyo, until the very last chapter, which is set in the near present and took my breath away - it somehow amplifies the story, and takes it way beyond everything you've read up to that point.

A quiet little book set in Japan in the lead-up to World War 2. Taki remembers her time as a maid for the Hirai family, the wife Tokiko not much older than herself at the time. It's remembrance of a time in Tokyo - the optimism of the 2600th Anniversary and the possibility of hosting the Olympics and the creeping spectre of war played out by this small, affluent family living in a red roofed house.

It is “Mono no aware” or “the pathos of things” and the ephemeral nature of beauty as shown in an unopened letter or a tin toy.

Tokiko's husband brings in a new colleague to help with designs at the toy factory and it's clear that Itakura is smitten with Tokiko. Taki knows that a good maid is responsible for the happiness of her employer's marriage. She remembers a story told by her first master about a maid burning a document “by accident”, taking action in a way that the master never could, and could never ask for, and how that is what makes a truly great maid. Taki has her own decisions to make for the good of the household, for the sake of the marriage and reflected back from a distance of decades, what did her choice ultimately accomplish.