A Tale For the Time Being
by Ruth Oziki
rating 8.5 / contemp.

There are at least two interwoven stories involved in this tale. The first concerns Yasutani Nao, a 15-year old Japanese girl, partly raised in California, who writes in her diary from Tokyo. She writes a lot about her difficult life, her 104-year old great-grandmother, Jiko, a Buddhist nun with whom she spent some time, and an uncle who was a scholar and then a kamikaze pilot.

Nao’s diaries include a memory from 9/11 so the chronology is hard to figure. Is Nao is 15 (or so) in 2001 or is she 5 then – probably 5 – but then she should be in California. The tsunami was in 2011, 10 years after 9/11/01 which was 70 years after the 1941 suicide missions. >>>>MORE>>>>