海の見える理髪店

This book contains six short stories. I’m gonna order the short descriptions / impressions from my least favorite to my favorite story:

遠くから来た手紙
It’s been a while since I’ve read this one, but it‘s about a married couple and their relationship problems. I didn’t like the protagonist very much (she wasn‘t being very communicative), and I didn’t quite see the message. Or maybe I just didn’t like it? For me, it read like: Oh, just deal with your husband not having any time for you and your child; people had it worse during the war with their loved one at the front far away. But it’s possible I’m forgetting some aspect.

海の見える理髪店
The title story. An old barber telling his life story to the protagonist, the customer. There seems to be some unspoken secret between them. Possibly the customer being his long lost son that his wife took from him because he used to abuse her? Very nebulous ending with no clear conclusion.

空は今日もスカイ
The story of a girl running away from home, meeting another child along the way. The story was really uneventful for a long time which made it a slog at times, but the ending was really good. The children end up far away from home and a homeless person takes them in to stay over at his „house“. The homeless guy notices that the other boy is being abused by his parents, and tells him to call the child protection services once he gets home. However the next day the homeless guy gets taken in by police because he „kidnapped“ the children. There’s lots of social criticism in this one, even though it didn’t seem like it at first glance. The author is also really good at describing the thought process of a child.

時のない時計
This story is about a man getting his deceased father‘s watch repaired and getting to know the clock maker‘s life story. This story had some real deep and sad moments. Some clocks have stopped, so the protagonist asks about them. Turns out one of them indicates the point in time the watch maker‘s disabled daughter died, whose disability he blames himself for because he didn’t allow the doctor to perform an emergency C-section when she was born. So quite heavy indeed. There’s also some flashbacks about the protagonist’s past and his relationship to his father. However the story is also interspersed quite heavily with passages describing the layout of the shop and the design of the clocks, which was a bit tiresome at times.

いつか来た道
In this story the protagonist visits her mother who she has a really bad relationship with. The mother never approved of her daughter’s career and often berated her as a child. While visiting she realizes her mother suffers from dementia and has turned into quite a different person. At first feeling morally superior because her mother no longer manages to care for herself, thus now being „beneath“ the daughter, she realizes that her mother needs help, forgives her for her rude past behavior and promises to come visit her more often.

成人式
The story that made me cry like twice. A couple loses their 15 year old daughter in a traffic accident. This story is about grief, how they deal with the loss, and their attempt at overcoming it five years later. The descriptions were just so realistic… How the mother sometimes cooks for three even though they are only two, how they promised each other not to watch back any old videos, how they don’t go skiing anymore because it reminds them of their daughter... I thought it was beautifully described.

I'd definitely recommend the book. It's quite easy to read as well, but there's definitely some heavier themes of grief and regret going on.